I feel your article (What Makes St John of God Care Tick, August 2011) missed some important points that warranted discussion. I am not a doctor, but follow health issues with great interest.

St John God is a not-for-profit institution as is say, the Cancer Council. However, there is an important difference. The board of the Cancer Council is not paid, whilst the Board of St John of God receives financial compensation. I have been told this is around id="mce_marker".5m a year.

I would have thought that board members of St John of God would not want to receive remuneration as they know St John of God is a not-for-profit organisation to which many members of the community make bequests. This would then appear to be a genuine and caring approach that shows respect for the community and demonstrates real morals, ethics and leadership, especially when SJOG has $411 million in net assets.

The pilgrimage to Spain and Ireland to enable a deeper understanding of the organisation’s ethos, begs the question, what is that ethos: volunteering is for mugs; board remuneration should be linked to the number of bequests signed up?

Non-profit should mean that board members volunteer their time - no exceptions, otherwise give up the charade and also give up the tax benefits.

Mr Allen Gianatti

RESPONSE:

Dr Michael Stanford, SJOG CEO: "My personal experience of organisations that don’t remunerate board members is that unless the workload and responsibilities are relatively small, board members often don’t fully commit."The term Not for Profit (NFP) relates to the purpose of an organisation, not whether its board members get paid or not. Like other NFPs, St John of God Health Care (SJGHC) does not exist to make a profit for shareholders. It exists to provide a community benefit. In SJGHC’s case, everything we earn we plough back into communities we serve.

A logical corollary of your reader’s hypothesis about unpaid board work is that all our staff should work pro bono for us; perhaps all doctors who admit and treat patients in our facilities should use their own instruments. The reality is we would be unable to find sufficient, high quality, committed staff unless we paid them competitively. The same is true of board members.

I’ve been personally involved on NFP boards as a board member for 17 years. I’ve also served, as a senior manager, five boards in the NFP and Public Health sectors. In my experience, all the large complex public and NFP health care organisations remunerate their board members. My personal experience of organisations that don’t remunerate board members is that unless the workload and responsibilities are relatively small, board members often don’t fully commit in terms of preparation, attendance and contribution.

Not all NFPs are the same. We are a very large NFP which over 116 years has developed into a major employer (9,535 staff), a major service provider ($943m revenue), and is presently taking the considerable risk of undertaking more than $340m “brownfield” redevelopments, in addition to designing, building and operating the new Midland Health Campus.

Our nine external board members each commit approximately 30 full days per year to their roles. This is an enormous commitment of time, especially for people who are very active in the workforce. The total fees paid to them are approximately half the figure indicated by your reader.

The complexity and risks, including personal risks, our board members deal with on a day-to-day basis are at least equivalent to the larger size For Profits and NFPs with whom we benchmark all manner of things, including board remuneration.

Dr Michael Stanford, Group Chief Executive Officer, SJOG Health Care