Category Archives: Musings

Nancy’s random thoughts

Argh. More on philanthropy

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Okay, it’s not news that I’m out of touch with the membership and the Association leaders. But this paragraph from the member center yanked my chain:

A Valentine’s Day CHALLENGE to All AAUW Members!
On February 14, call someone you know and explain why you’re so passionate about AAUW”tell them about the mission, the research, the advocacy, the philanthropy, and why you are a member. Then, invite them to join or give them the gift of membership!

 

I’d rewrite it as

tell them about the mission, the research, and the advocacy. Tell them why you are a member and why you donate your money and your time to this cause.

Maybe I’m just hung up on the word “philanthropy,” and need to get over the fact that we’re moving towards checkbook members and away from volunteers.

One member, one vote

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One of the bylaws changes is to have members be able to vote on issues between conventions. This would lead to “one member, one vote” with folks returning USMail ballots or voting electronically without regard to their branch membership or any “delegate” status.

This is the norm for many other national associations.

I’ve heard that this is the point where the leadership expects to see the most opposition to the changes. While it’s needed for flexibility, folks seem to be having heartburn with the idea of passing such decisions off to the membership as a whole without the chance to have floor debate, hallway discussions, onsite campaigning and such that has been an important part of conventions. I, for one, who was part of the small group that pushed the change in the degree requirement at the 2005 convention, certainly understand the benefit of this campaining — it was MUCH easier to change the minds of the folks who were at Convention and were made aware that many members cared passionately about this issue (THANK YOU Frieda Schurch; may you rest in peace Cindy Hebert). On the other hand, the VAST majority of our members just DO NOT CARE about the details of governance.

So, I think we’re struggling with

  1. How do we strengthen the board so it can make more decisions without going to the membership for approval
  2. How do we make the membership comfortable with that strengthened board.

In the words of Good to Great, I think we need to address the “get the right people on the bus” at the time the board is selected. And our current process just will not continue to work as fewer and fewer members want to spend any time dealing with the picky details of the organization.

Draft of Keep, Discard, Change, Add

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Keep

Opportunities to develop communities of like-minded folks, in particular like-minded in the sense of energy and commitment to the mission (which is, perhaps a characteristic of branch boards and higher levels of the organization rather than branches in general who have a different “take” on “like-minded”).

Discard

Electing the national board (except, perhaps, for a couple of tokens). That is madness.

Change

How we decide who gets what messages — the Association has little real nead for the list of officers (other than to provide the lists back to the branches/states) but they *do* need to know who wants to hear about what kind of information (e.g. programming ideas, communications key messages, membership ideas). The interest in these messages is a characteristic of the individual (and should appear on the individual’s record not on the organization’s record) with support for many people getting the same message. [It’d also be a way to tally votes on who’s interested in what.]

How we collect dues. This MUST start going through national, sooner rather than later.

Add

Paid positions for grass roots support (to replace some of the functions now served by states and regions between the national level and the grass roots). This could, for instance, provide “news from outside your community” inserts for branch newsletters if the states (or corresponding volunteer groups) decide to drop their own newsletter.

Measuring outcomes not activity

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I’ve vision of an AAUW that allows groups to call themselves branches only if they are really advancing the mission. Other names could be found for other clusters of folks who are hanging together for other reasons, but could we come up with a way to enforce the “use of name” without (horrors!) layering on yet another set of bureaucracy?

When Pat Nichols talked about “speaking truth to power” did he envision (did we envision) holding current branch leaders accountable for progress towards the mission? [Where, really, is the power vested in the organization??]
When Jackie Woods challenged branches to “deliver programs that reflect 21st century trends” and “be advocaces for equity, access and change”  what was her vision?

Can we make changes that allow us to have a significant affect on the society around us? Or are we limited to measuring “activity” and will we continue to be focused on process?

SWOT for the OSG task force

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The Organizational Structure and Governance task force is doing a SWOT analysis for the various levels of the organization. Thinking abou this led me to a SWOT for the group:

Strengths

  • Core group of committed, engaged members who care about the outcome of the process

Weaknesses

  • Limited diversity in the core group — cultural biases represent our current membership
  • Difficulty getting all to the same level of understanding of how the change process has evolved since 2004 (or even 2000)

Opportunities

  • Can craft recommendations that offer a radically different way for Association members to organize themselves

Threats

  • Current members may silently reject the recommendations and either vote with their feet (by dropping out) or hang on paying only lip service to the change.
  • If the new structure (and the entire new brand) is not “sold” well enough to new constituencies, this work will do nothing to stem the historical decline.