Question

You are the new Executive Director for a small, local nonprofit healthcare facility, offering free and reduced cost medical treatments to those who are unable to afford it on their own. After you have settled in and spent several months getting to know your staff and board of directors, you find that one board member, Dr. Slacker, is rarely in attendence at meetings even though there is a strict attendence policy. When you approach the board president, Ms. Ringleader about replacing Dr. Slacker with someone who will be more committed, she replies that he has been instrumental in obtaining thousands of dollars worth of funding for the nonprofit and has a strong tie to the medical community and they could never kicked him off of the board. You realize how important this can be, but feel the position could be filled by someone who will be more involved in the planning that goes on during board meetings.

Faced with this dilema, what would you do?

Answer 1

In the given scenario, there is a dilemma between the results delivered by Dr. Slacker and the organizational policy of strict attendance.
For the organization of non-profit nature, it is very important to bring funding to the organization so that the organization becomes sustainable in the long run. Due to funding to the organization, the community is benefiting. So, the results delivered by Dr. Slacker are morally right as per the utilitarian approach of the ethics as well as the consequential approach of the ethics. So, on ethical ground, Dr. Slacker should not be terminated.
Further, each employee and directors have set of responsibilities and the most important responsibility is bring funds and create networking for the benefits of the society and poor people. It is already being delivered by Dr. Slacker. Though, there is an issue of lack of attendance from the end of Dr. Slacker that can also be resolved with following initiatives.
1.   Take inputs from Dr. Slacker on telephone, emails, via video conference and or in presence when he is available
2.   Relieve Dr. Slacker from admin responsibilities and helping him to be focused upon fund raising and network building. Here, the admin work should be assigned to another, but regular and attentive individual to dispose the workload.

Above initiatives will resolve the dilemma.