In general, when Board members act outside their Board duties, they should understand that in that context they are operating as volunteers and so should be taking direction from staff; i.e. in this case they were there to box and move, not be involved in decision-making. A clearer process might have been for you to inventory the collection with the donor and list or set aside the objects to be added to your collection. At a later date volunteers could help you box and move the selected items. If the donor wanted to make arrangements later with anyone interested in the remaining bottles, that would not be a conflict of interest. If you and the Board member were simulatenously making decisions about "these are mine, and these are the museum's," the situation is open for unintentionallly unethical behavior, in that the Board member is collecting in the same areas as the museum. When a Board member and a museum collect in the same area, the museum must always be given right of first refusal. (Board members should also never be able to accept items deaccessioned from the museum.)
All this should be spelled out in an Ethics Policy signed by Board members at the beginning of the year, just as a refresher.
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Elizabeth Stewart PhD
Director
Renton History Museum
Renton WA
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-24-2017 11:21 AM
From: Cynthia Mallery
Subject: ethics
I have a question about ethics, recently our museum was given a large bottle collection. I had two of my board members come along to help me with boxing and moving the collection to our museum. one of my board members I noticed was being very overly chummy with one of the donors. the next thing that I noticed is that she was receiving items that were an interest to her and her collection not the museums. I really do not know how to handle this I find this behavior to be rather unethical but at the same time the donor was looking to get rid of these certain items so am I wrong in thinking that this was out of line for this board member to do receive these items or is this ok behavior?
Cynthia Mallery
Coordinator
Smith-Zimmermann Museum
605-256-5308