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Changes we made in forming a branch

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AAUW North Carolina has just formed the Tar Heel Branch, http://tarheel.aauwnc.org, a “branch without borders” that will serve the entire state using the Montana model .

Given this experience, I have a few comments on the process AAUW recommends for branch formation. Since this is something folks tend to do once in a lifetime, there’s not much opportunity for learning the process. So here’s my two cents, particularly for the benefit of those who are forming these new-style virtual branches. I have written the membership department and membership committee with some of these comments, but don’t have the sense that changing the documented process is high on anyone’s TODO list.

The short version of the recommended process (login to get the whole scoop – or let me know where this is posted on www.aauw.org) is

  • Phase I: A small group recruits 15 individuals eligible for membership, chooses a branch name, notifies any branches that will be affected by the new branch, and petitions the state for approval.
  • Phase II: The initial group decides whether it will use bylaws or working rules during its initial period, finalizes the appropriate document and sends it to the AAUW bylaws chair for approval. Recruiting continues and discussion/implementation of programming begins.
  • Phase III: The group elects branch officers (using guidance from the bylaws or working rules). Copies of the state approval from Phase I, the bylaws chair approval from Phase II, and the list of (at least 15) charter members and the branch officers are sent to AAUW. The AAUW executive committee reviews this information and issues a formal letter confirming the branch as a duly chartered organization. Recruiting, programming continue.
  • Phase IV: The branch receives the charter, applies to the IRS for an EIN, opens a bank account and starts collecting dues.

We saw two major problems with this process

  1. State approval is requested after the 15 charter members are identified. It should be possible to describe the concept of the branch (“evening branch” in a community where another branch already exists, virtual branch that might recruit from all the other branches’ areas) to the state board and get the state’s approval before recruiting is very far along. The recruiting message can be much stronger if the organizers can say they have the state organization’s support.
  2. Dues are not collected until phase IV. In the best of cases, this process can take 3-6 months. Nonmembers who become prospects early in the process should become AAUW members as early as possible.

Here is the process as we modified it for the AAUW Tar Heel (NC) Branch:

  • Phase I: An initial group comes up with the idea for a new branch. They contact the state mvp and president to discuss how the new branch would advance the AAUW mission. The state lets the other branches (especially those that would be directly affected) know that this group would like to form. The group petitions the state for approval in principle of the branch concept.
  • Phase II: The core group recruits a fiscal agent, decides the amount (if any) of local dues that will be collected during this phase, and starts recruiting members (who pay dues at the this time).* As the group grows, discussions of programming start (both to serve the current members and to provide opportunities for recruiting additional members). The state provides resources to orient the new members on AAUW priorities and programs.
  • Phase III: The threshold of 15 members is reached. A group works out the bylaws or working rules which will guide the branch during the first year (and gets them approved by the Association bylaws chair). The members approve the name of the branch, approve bylaws/working rules, elect officers, and approve the amount of local dues. This information is sent to the state for its approval, and then the petition for a charter is sent to AAUW.
  • Phase IV: Once the charter is approved, AAUW creates the branch in its database, connects the branch members and officers to the branch in the database, and sends formal approval to the branch. The branch applies to the IRS for an EIN and opens a bank account. The branch settles accounts with the fiscal agent. Recruiting continues (with checks now being written to the new branch), and the branch programs begin using the branch’s formal name.

Again, we did it this way during July – December 2008, using AAUW NC as the fiscal agent. It really adds two steps to the proces: state approval in principle (Phase I) and the use of a fiscal agent (phase II, III). It’s likely that this isn’t the best process — but we tried to comply with the current requirements while making sure that our prospects got AAUW and AAUW NC benefits as soon as possible.

We recommend this modified process to any other group starting a new branch. It requires some familiarity with the dues schedule (MALs converting to branch membership, half-year dues, branch members from this state and other states joining the new branch as dual members, c/u reps joining the branch, etc.). It was helpful that the person responsible for tracking new member data was a branch treasurer who could see information on members (e.g. expiration date for MALs) through the aauw.org Member Services Database. That meant that the when the list of charter members was submitted it could include the member id and expiration date of each charter members. A fiscal agent with branch treasurer access may be able to help the new branch with these details.

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*The branch doesn’t exist, so it can’t have a bank account, therefore it needs a “fiscal agent” to collect dues. We did it this way partly because the last branch that formed in North Carolina had a terrible time with dues collected but not promptly forwarded to AAUW. A couple of models for this:

  • The state is the fiscal agent. A new member writes a check to the state. Someone in the core group is responsible for filling out an at-large membership form and forwarding the form and the check to the state treasurer. The state treasurer forwards the form and a check for at-large membership dues to AAUW (keeping the state portion of the dues, and holding the local portion in the state account for the branch).
  • Another branch is the fiscal agent. A new member writes a check to this branch. Someone in the core group is responsible for filling out the branch membership form and forwarding the form and the check to the branch treasurer. The branch treasurer processes this as usual, except that the local portion of the dues is held for the new branch. The existing branch may or may not confer the benefits of branch membership, but the new member will get benefits from AAUW and the state

There will be expenses for the branch during Phase 2 and 3 — postage, printing, etc. It may be that the core group will be willing to cover these out of pocket — but if the branch chooses to collect local dues (or has other income — perhaps fundraising?) the fiscal agent may also be asked to reimburse expenses.

Tech Toolkit — Progress?

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Once upon a time (1999 actually), AAUW published a set of toolkits — membership, president, leadership, etc. These were 8.5×11 guides that contained a wealth of information. In the almost ten years since, the idea has been extended and enhanced — the membership toolkit is updated each year, a public policy manual was recently published, the finance officers toolkit includes key information, and the entire series was augmented with the spring 2008 Leadership Development DVD. The current list includes:

Back when I served on the Association Program Development Committee 2001-2003, one of my goals was to plant the seeds for a Technology Toolkit — from the 2001 convention discussions (Tech-Savvy in the Branches special interest group, in particular) it was clear that AAUW could provide a member benefit by providing direction on what tech skills were key for members (and if not for all members for each branch to encourage some member to learn).

The problem’s enormous, of course.

This morning, I reconfigured wiki.bbvx.org to be a holding place for resources that I’ve been collecting along the way. I’m not sure why it took me so long to consider using the wiki to help outline the toolkit, but now that it’s done, I hope to gather my thoughts there — and to encourage others to contribute (at least to the list of topics that need to be covered).

Comments welcome!

Going back to tab navigation in iGoogle

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I’ve been recommending iGoogle for awhile — particular using iGoogle to display RSS feeds. It’s my default home page — showing AAUW headlines from a few sites, general news from a few sites, the weather here and at Mother’s, a clock, a couple of stock tickers, a few “fun” widgets, etc.

I’ve also set up a tab to access my Google docs –makes sense not to have that cluttering the main page since I think of it as a completely separate application.

A week or so ago, the tab navigation (at the top) changed to links on a left-hand sidebar. This apparently has something to do with Google’s earlier announcement of Open Social and their desire to reserve some screen real estate for updates like those that Facebook displays on your home page. But for me at the moment, the whole left-hand sidebar has just two links — a silly waste of space.

In the notice about the change, the unofficial Google blog says:

If you have the new version, but you prefer the previous interface, go to the settings page and select English (UK) from the list of languages. Please note that this is just a temporary fix.

Works for me, for now.

I guess the question is “When will the grand convergence come, and how will it fit on my 1400×1050 screen and my 1949-model brain?” For now, when I want to see updates from my contacts, I go to Facebook (not twitter, not friendfeed, not Google). When I want a quick overview of the world around me, I go to iGoogle (not Facebook).

When “real world” applications and “applications affecting contacts” start to run on the same platform, what will the UI look like to keep those different classes of applications both displayed in a way that makes sense?  Will my screen or my head explode first?

So long to the Facebook app change.org

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It’s been a long time since I’ve published my list of Facebook apps. The new Facebook interface (rolled out over the last few months) seems to have thrown a number of apps into never never land — and some of the backends of the apps have changed in ways that aren’t compatible with Facebook and may need work to bring them back.

There are other apps that seem to have floundered  – in particular ones that use RSS or other integration with outside sites (del.icio.us), but I’d like to write here about change.org.

I just found out that the redesign of change.org means that the Facebook links are broken. The new site looks good, and it sounds as if they are working on the integration — but the Facebook integration (ability, say, to invite Facebook friends to join the change) was a key factor for me. I doubt that I’ll be an active member of a completely separate change.org social network.

It also appears that they’ve backed away completely from organizing things around “what do you want to change?” I understand that might have left an enormous amount of “cruft” in the database, so the motivation to set up certain broad “causes” with paid staff to manage them must have very strong. But I now can’t find how to find my smaller “pay equity” change in the broader “women’s rights” cause. Once I login to the change.org site I can find my list of Facebook friends and invite them — but to what? I went there trying to post a link to a paper I’d found on the specific topic of Pay Equity — and the only way I could dope out to do that was to make “read the paper” an action for the Women’s Rights cause.

Ah, well. Nice idea while it lasted. A second warning to be careful about fundraising-type applications in Facebook (the demise of Charifree earlier this year was the first).

Demise of the daily newspaper. Okay, I get it.

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The Raleigh News & Observer is a venerable paper with a long history of excellent investigative reporting and excellent voter education. In fact, I wasn’t too upset when the branch let drop its traditional voter guide for the county commissioners election — the paper would publish candidate profiles and more, just as in past years, right?

Well, I’m not so sure.

The paper is no longer locally owned, but was purchased by the McClatchy company a few years ago — a good syndicate, as syndicates go, but it does mean there are outside influences at work. Times are not happy in newsrooms these days — and the current storyline in Doonesbury hits a bit too close to home with the retirement of Pat Stith, longtime investigative reporter. The paper’s management seemed to be making the best of a bad economic situation, and while the paper on newsprint has been getting smaller and smaller the online resources were still there, weren’t they?

Well, maybe not.

In previous election cycles, I could go to newsobserver.com/elections or some such and find a well organized collection of resources – lists of candidates, candidate profiles, and more. Try to find that now… All I could get to was a blog-like listing of articles (sort of) related to the election. [Mea culpa. That’s probably what www.aauwnc.org looks like to someone who clicks on one of its categories. Has the blog paradigm so quickly destroyed more careful information architechture?] Looking for the backup on the endorsements they’ve already published on the county commissioners’ race turned up very little. [The early endorsement makes me wonder if they’ll be publishing their comprehensive voter guide the weekend before the election — or if they’re assuming that the change to early-voting will make that too little, too late, so not worth doing.]

Okay, it’s a complex election — president, senator, governor, and (weird as it is) nine members of the governor’s cabinet as well as the US House, state legislators, and local races. But has the paper really given up providing the kind of comprehensive coverage that it gave us in the past? And replaced it with things like triangle.com?

Ah, well.

Note to self: beef up rwc.aauwnc.org with more election resources.