Pacifica’s unique governance structure is composed of staff and listener members elected from its 5 sister stations nationwide.
Currently each station is holding local station board elections and you can run! Contact the election supervisor (nes@pacifica.org) if you need assistance with your nomination paperwork.
In order to run as a listener candidate for the local station board, you have to be a member of the station at which you are seeking to become a board member by contributing $25 to the station or performing 3 hours of approved volunteer work between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.
In order to run as a staff member you must be paid or unpaid staff at your station. Unpaid staff are staff members who has worked 30 hours or more on programming related work (not phone room, fundraising or committee work) between April 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 (the record date).
All pieces of the nomination package (coversheet, statements, questionnaire, fair campaign provisions and 15 petition signatures from other members) must be completed by July 6th, 2023.
TO REGISTER AS A CANDIDATE CLICK HERE
Once you register, the election supervisor will verify your membership is current and you will be able to fill out your candidate statements (long and short) and your questionnaire directly in your online profile.
You can see your online profile alongside all registered candidates here (click). You will have through July 6th, 2023 to make changes to your profile.
The petition signature collection process is integrated in the online platform. You can collect petition signatures from members who sign up as nominators (nominator sign up link here) and other candidates. You will be able to directly nominate other candidates within this profile.
The final piece to your nomination package is to e-sign the Fair Campaign Provisions.
The deadline to file is July 6th, 2023.
Part of the nomination package is to collect petition signatures from other members, 15 for listener candidates and 5 for staff candidates. This process is now completely online and nominators can register here. Once the nominator’s member status is verified they will be able to simply click a box to nominate the candidates they wish to support.
How Governance Works
During each election process, each of the station’s five signal areas across the country holds an election to select 12 delegates to its local board. This constitutes half of the local board, with the other half elected in alternate years.
Nine of the delegates are listener-sponsors and represent all of the people who have provided financial support to the station over the past year by becoming members with a $25 or more donation to the station. Three of the delegates are staff-members and represent the employees and volunteer programmers at the stations.
Listener members and staff members vote in different classes, so each of these elections are separate and a person can only vote in one of them, not both.
What do local station boards do?
The local boards are committees of the national board of directors and have specific responsibilities delegated to them which include:
➢ Evaluating the station’s general manager and program director
➢ Reviewing the station’s local budget before forwarding it to national
➢ Holding local town hall discussion sessions at least twice a year
➢ Assisting with off-air fundraising for the stations
➢ Reaching out to under-represented communities
➢ Making sure program evaluation and selection processes are fair, collaborative, respectful and quality-based.
In addition, the local boards each annually select 1/5 of the makeup of the national board of directors for the Pacifica Foundation 501(c)3 by choosing three listener representatives and one staff representative from their number to serve annual terms on the national board.
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