Consortium Founding Document - the Constitution

Following a search and selection process initiated in December 2008, the Alliance engaged the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to work on the architecture of the Consortium. BCG was tasked to design a draft Consortium Constitution and draft terms of reference of its Board and CEO (or Executive Director). They started this work by interviewing Centres leadership and ‘benchmarking’ with some relatively similar external organizations. A first draft of the Constitution (see attached below), and the associated terms of reference, were discussed during the Alliance May 11-13, 2009 meeting.

At its meeting the Alliance examined and commented upon all aspects of the draft constitution, using a set of key design questions previously discussed with stakeholders around such topics as decision making, fund allocation, Consortium Office financing, the Consortium’s role in organizational redesign and the Consortium Board. Overall the draft constitution reflects the Alliance's unanimous agreement on a number of key Consortium design issues. The draft Constitution was submitted to the CGIAR Executive Council (meeting on 4-5 June) as part of the consultations on the creation of the Consortium. With comments from ExCo, this draft has been updated and amended. An Alliance-donor reference group was set up for this purpose. This iterative process led to amendments deemed satisfactory to the two reference groups. The draft Constitution was discussed by the full Alliance (October 29-31) and and then by the Members of ExCo (3-4 November 2009).

A copy of the latest draft of the Constitution (dated 8 October 2009) is attached below in addition to an outline of the changes that occurred between the May draft and the current (October) version. The Alliance has now instructed its legal counsel to formulate the Constitution in appropriate legal language while maintaining the substantive content and meaning of the current text. As part of the revision, matters such as nominations for Board members and detailed terms of reference for the CEO will be moved to a separate document on Consortium Board rules and procedures.