LISTSERV 16.0 - MICE-DISCUSS Archives

I think we're on the same page here in general but what I was getting at specifically was that a quote isn't a contract and thus unless you signed an NDA on behalf of MICE (maybe you did and I missed that in the lengthy thread above?) there is no NDA. Just like I wouldn't be concerned with sharing a quote in this scenario with anyone in my own purchasing or infrastructure team for review I don't largely see a difference with MICE and coop members. I guess I would just be upfront with vendors and tell them that quotes are open for viewing by MICE membership unless it's done under some kind of RFP scenario and they can modify the wording as needed on the quote if they are concerned the pricing they are offering is better than what they might offer a commercial customer (IE: "Special discounted pricing for MICE, not representative of standard commercial discount rate" or similar).

Anyway I don't see this aspect of the discussion really going anywhere useful in an email thread, and it might just be best discussed at the next meeting, but just felt obligated to point out that we need to encourage financial transparency as I've seen lack of transparency tear apart non-profits in the past and I want to see MICE continue to be successful.

On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 3:48 PM, Richard Laager <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

On 02/05/2018 03:39 PM, Brady Kittel wrote:
> Just putting the words "confidential" on a quote or document doesn't
> generate an automatic contractual NDA as much as vendors might wish it does.

Agreed.

I'm not going to rehash points already made, but I do want to add that
the ambiguity can go both ways. Sometimes when you make a point of
pushing things, they end up going the opposite way you wanted. For
example, if I push back on this, we could get confirmation that it's
totally fine to share the pricing publicly. Or, we could get an explicit
requirement of a real NDA on that pricing. The latter would require
changes to our existing treasurer's reports.

I'm not saying this is the case, because as I noted, it hasn't been
discussed at all either way with this particular vendor. So I was taking
the "let sleeping dogs lie" approach.

--
Richard