Matt only, except the section marked shareable
Your script for the calls that happen before the packet lands, the two numbers to correct first, and a link to the summary that travels with it.
No director should read "nine positions are being eliminated" for the first time in a PDF on a Friday afternoon. The call is short and its only job is to remove surprise.
Order matters. Mari first, on her own. Then the rest of the board, or the executive committee if there is one. All calls finish before the packet lands in anybody's inbox.
The restructuring is reported to the board. It is the interim CEO's decision. The only item that needs a board vote is the time-off policy change, because it alters terms of employment for every employee and lives in the handbook. That vote happens at the September 5th meeting, after the announcement.
If this is not said out loud, a director who objects on Monday morning believes they hold a veto they do not have. That is how a board is lost over a misunderstanding rather than a disagreement.
Six or seven minutes. Do not read it. These are the beats.
"You are getting the full plan Friday and I did not want the staffing part to reach you cold in a document. Five minutes now so you know what you are reading."
"Four grants ended or are ending. Grant income drops from about $2.87 million to about $1.02 million, a 65 percent fall in one year. That leaves us spending roughly $158,000 a month more than we bring in. December 1st is the date we decide what this organisation becomes: merge, wind down, close, or continue."
"On September 2nd we eliminate nine positions and consolidate services, and we announce a change to the time-off policy. Everything lands the same day on purpose, so nobody spends three weeks waiting for the next shoe."
"You will see a gross figure of about $900,000 attached to the list. That is not the saving. About $300,000 of it was already leaving regardless, and about $135,000 is grant funded, so it goes when the grant goes. The real new saving to Arukah is about $469,000 of salary, roughly $557,000 loaded. I would rather you hear the smaller true number from me than find it in the packet."
"Read it over the weekend and get me anything by Monday morning. Two things I need you to hold: no names travel outside the board, and this is a plan I am accountable for, not a vote you are being asked to take. The only vote is the time-off policy on September 5th."
"Anything you want in the packet that is not in it, tell me now and I will put it in."
Do not negotiate the decision on the phone. "Put that in writing to me by Monday morning and I will answer it directly." That keeps the feedback window doing its job and keeps the call from becoming an unscheduled board meeting with one director.
The real figure is 14 percent no-show plus 20 percent cancellation. If a director reads 60 percent and later hears 34 percent, every other number in the packet becomes negotiable. Correct it in the packet and mention the correction in the call. Owning a correction buys credibility; being caught on one spends it.
One working estimate has cash running out in the first week of November. The financial model behind the deck says around September 12th. Both came from us. A board handed two dates for the same event stops trusting the packet, and a finance-literate director finds this in ten minutes.
Reconcile before Friday. Most likely explanation is that one figure is cash-only and the other assumes a bridge or a grant landing, but that is a hypothesis until Diane's Thursday numbers settle it.
Sections 1 to 3 of this page are your call script. If the summary lived here too, printing this page or handing someone your screen would hand them your own script for the calls you just made with them. It has its own link so that cannot happen.
Positions only, no names, and the savings bridge stated before a director works it out.