Board meeting - March 2017

Kia ora, I am the NZSL Board Chair, Victoria Manning.

I am giving a summary of the NZSL Board meeting on 31 March 2017 in Wellington.

The NZSL Board met on 31 March 2017 to carefully assess and recommend suitable applications for funding available from the NZSL Fund. This was the key focus of this meeting.

The NZSL Board was encouraged by the range and number of proposals received for the third round, and the interest and commitment of all those who took the time to make applications to support the maintenance and promotion of NZSL. The NZSL Board received a total of 40 applications, totalling nearly $1.9 million dollars.

In their decision-making, the NZSL Board considered how closely applications were aligned with the theme of ‘Strengthening NZSL in the home and Deaf community’. Other matters such as ‘value for money’, whether proposed initiatives should be more appropriately funded by other agencies, and the potential capability to successfully implement the proposed initiative also informed the decision-making process.

A consensus decision was made to fund 17 projects for the third round, and received a total of nearly $545,000.

To maintain the confidence of both the Government and the NZSL community, it is important to the NZSL Board that they conduct their affairs impartially. All conflicts, either actual or potential are made known to the NZSL Board before making any assessment of application. This ensures that:

• the selection process is transparent and fair
• all applications are assessed in a consistent manner against the criteria set out in the information that applicants received
• all relevant information is considered in the assessment process
• the selection process results in good decision making
• the documents support the decision making process

Prior to discussion on each application, the Chair checked the Conflicts Register and announced those who had declared a conflict of interest. The Chair then asked for any further conflicts of interest to be announced, and added to the register if any. NZSL Board members, depending on their level of conflict, were removed from participating in the discussion for that application (insert link to ‘Required response to level of conflict’ document). They were also not able to answer any questions and could not vote. Where the Chair has a conflict of interest, the Deputy Chair then facilitated the discussion on that topic.

Thank you.