How do we get our chair off the email train?

Agony Uncle's answer

Okay, so the person concerned

1. isn’t a current board member or officeholder
2. isn’t a responsible person, under the ACNC guidance (not “responsible for the charity’s day-to-day management and decision-making in practice”)

What you have is a nagging case of Founder’s Syndrome. Which is to say yes, you’re right, it would be regarded as unusual for an organisation to have a non-board member representing the organisation in advocacy correspondence from an organisational address with his name on it, and yes, it could easily be inherently poor practice, but that’s not much help to you.

There are three different questions at play: what does the law say, what’s good practice, and what’s least likely to blow up in your (collective) face.

• The law would like to have clear distinctions between persons who can commit your organisation to actions or policies and those who can’t. There are degrees, of course. To what extent is the person concerned freelancing? That is to say, does ‘advocacy’ mean keeping in touch with previous correspondents, or opening new arguments with fresh adversaries? Is there any risk of anyone libelling anyone? The answer, mind you, is probably not; very few NFPs end up in hot water, and very few of those of those are pulled in by uncontrolled volunteers rather than the board itself screwing up, and if you do decide to sigh deeply and let it ride then probably nothing is going to happen to you. A lot depends, however, on how happy you are with the word “probably”.
• Is it good practice? Probably not. That’s why Founder’s Syndrome is a thing that people warn you against. On the other hand, this is a relatively mild case; the Founder isn’t trying to steamroller the board, as often happens, which is where most of the real eruptions occur. If they’re really doing roughly the same thing as they were when they were on the board, under similar constraints, there’s probably (as above) not much additional risk.
• What’s your best chance for a quiet life? Which is, I have to say, a decision I have to throw back on you. You have, on the one hand, a complainant who wants something, personally. Is there anyone on the other side who feels strongly that they don’t want that to happen? If you give in, that is, will that just create another problem? I’m inclined to give considerable weight to this. Something may conceivably go wrong down the track if you give in to the person and a lot of other things then all go wrong at once; only if there are actual opponents prepared to put some work into it will anything go wrong right now with giving in.

In general terms, I’m inclined to a policy of “Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.” Don’t encourage storms in your good teacups. If anything unlikely should go wrong, it’s still practically never the case that you can’t patch it up in retrospect with an apology and some indulgence for NFPness.