Does anyone have a good reference for private corporations that want to do business with non-profits, specifically...
Does anyone have a good reference for private corporations that want to do business with non-profits, specifically their boards of directors?
What I'm trying to find (and I've searched Google, but apparently without the right keywords) is a guide for vendors who want to secure non-profit contracts.
So far all I've seen are articles and blog posts about when or if a non-profit should outsource. I consult with a non-profit occasionally and they have a quasi vendor who's going about securing the bid, invoicing and completing the work completely wrong and now he's trying to threaten legal action. All because he doesn't understand the difference between working with a private business and a non-profit BoD.
What is a quasi vendor, you might ask? There may be a better name for the relationship, but for this instance it means a vendor who was told by a single board member to start bidding on contracts, has only been awarded one - which he failed to deliver - but has started invoicing on all manner of projects he was not asked by the board majority to bid on.
Per my suggestion a letter of procedure is being written to outline the proper process when working with this particular board per their governing documents, but I'd also like to see a non-biased third party tutorial to provide this vendor as well.
What I'm trying to find (and I've searched Google, but apparently without the right keywords) is a guide for vendors who want to secure non-profit contracts.
So far all I've seen are articles and blog posts about when or if a non-profit should outsource. I consult with a non-profit occasionally and they have a quasi vendor who's going about securing the bid, invoicing and completing the work completely wrong and now he's trying to threaten legal action. All because he doesn't understand the difference between working with a private business and a non-profit BoD.
What is a quasi vendor, you might ask? There may be a better name for the relationship, but for this instance it means a vendor who was told by a single board member to start bidding on contracts, has only been awarded one - which he failed to deliver - but has started invoicing on all manner of projects he was not asked by the board majority to bid on.
Per my suggestion a letter of procedure is being written to outline the proper process when working with this particular board per their governing documents, but I'd also like to see a non-biased third party tutorial to provide this vendor as well.
Comments
It's a giant clusterf* that should never have been allowed to happen. There's a reason processes exist.
I said, once again (I've been saying this since March), without a contract any invoice he submits is null and void. The problem is this particular vendor has the support of one board member, another board member who just wants it to go away and is willing to pay for it to go away and the final board member who wants to come out on top.
I can't express how much each of these board members is frustrating me. And I'm not even being paid for this! A friend - the third board member - asked my take on it and when I offered advice she ignored it. Since then she's been coming back, asking my advice, even going so far as to read me their correspondence, and then ignoring everything I say. A major problem is she's not looking at this as a business transaction but as a personal affront against her. She keeps telling me she wants to try and trick the vendor into admitting guilt and I keep telling her she doesn't have to: her board does not have a contract with this vendor.
We argued about it so much one day a bystander had to come over and check on us. I told her not to even bring it up with me again which took about three days before she was talking about it again. I ran this past a friend of mine with an MBA just in case she had a different professional perspective and the MBA agreed with me: no contract, no responsibility to pay.
Since my last comment she's called me once more because her board meeting is tomorrow night and she's trying to figure out how to handle this situation - again.. I told her to go in there, ask for the contract and when it isn't provided his invoice is null and void. Then she went off on a tangent about picking apart his invoice and started reading me what he's invoicing on. After each line item I said, "And where in the contract is that stated?" After about the third time she started yelling at me, "We don't have a contract! You already know this!"
Well, there's your answer. Don't pay it. Let him sue you and let the judge ask him for a contract, I said.
So, they took my earlier advice about formally informing this contractor to cease and desist all activities he thinks he can invoice for until the board sorted this out. The vendor took that to mean bypassing the executive director and calling board members directly.
Like I said, it's a giant clusterf*
[1] Per the non-profit's lawyer: no contract means no responsibility to pay the invoices.
[2] Apparently, she and the other board members tentatively agreed to pay a portion of the invoice just to get the vendor to walk away.
Whatever, it's not my money and I'm not being paid for the headache.
[3] So, now, a senior person within the non-profit's management chain has also declared that without a contract the vendor has no cause to issue invoices and the non-profit has no responsibility to pay any invoices issued by the vendor.
So, the lawyer and the senior executive in the management chain both agree with my assessment.
So, I told her they didn't need to be dealing with this for the past 3-4 months. They needed to just follow my counseling and move on to which she threw a fit. My opinion, apparently, means absolutely nothing.