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 Open letter to the Montgomery County Humane Society Board of Directors:

As a former member of the Montgomery County Humane Society Board of Directors, I respectfully call upon the current board to make public the organization's fiscal 2008 financial statements as soon as possible. The charity, which has a county contract and receives approximately half its revenue from county taxpayers, concluded its fiscal year on June 30 — almost five months ago. 

Due to recent concerns about the shelter's financial situation, management practices and board governance in newspaper articles this summer, the current board should allow sunshine to illuminate results of its fiduciary oversight, or lack thereof.

In accordance with the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance's standards for charity accountability — online at www.give.org — the fiscal 2008 financials should now be made public so the current board's effectiveness can be determined. The purposes of these standards are "to assist donors in making sound giving decisions and to foster public confidence in charitable organizations."

The standards say that any charity should "make available to all, on request, complete annual financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles." Let the board now become fully accountable to the organization's donors, county taxpayers and the animals themselves — indeed the charity's most important constituency.

Rob Blizard, Gaithersburg

The writer, a former member of the Humane Society's board of directors, and has spent a decade in nonprofit fund-raising at national charities. He also is a freelance writer for nonprofit management and fund-raising trade publications.