[acb-hsp] affiliate growth

Mon Jul 23 15:40:36 EDT 2012

Hello List:

I have been following this thread for the past few days and thank everyone for their comments.  I thank Andy for his comments as well.

I have remained silent, because as President, I want to be careful and fair in what I say, for the sake of officers and other list members.

I want to say first, thank you to Peter for presenting to those who attended our program.  He gave an excellent presentation.  I felt it was pretty well attended, and we learned a great deal,, including that we might want to build on the subject at a future program.

Our activities this year were sparsely attended with 10 at the networking session, 2 at the business meeting and closer to 20 at the Diversity Program.

Several officers were unable to attend convention this year due to finances and other commitments.  I attended, even though finances and my husband’s health were of great concern to me.

We intended to have a business meeting including elections, but we did not have enough members for a quorum.

In regards to the conference calls, we cut back to every other month due to low attendance and low participation in presentation.

In terms of affiliate activities, officers may organize events, but it takes the membership as well as the officers to make events successful.

We have had strategic planning conference calls, also attended mostly by officers and few members.

We have sent articles to “The Braille Forum” to help publicize, but although we get them in by deadlines, the editor does not print them for months, so by the time they are published they are not timely.

We have advertized events on the leadership list, but that has not increased participation.

We developed a schedule for the entire year of 2011 with planned topics for each conference call.  Still these calls were sparsely attended.

We have partnered with other affiliates in the past, and plan to in future.

Some of these issues are brought forward by people who do not necessarily participate in phone or face-to-face events and who are not paid members. Some of the complaints are offered by people who do nott share the entire story. For example, presenters who agree to speak on calls fail to show up on time and only join calls when they receive calls asking if they were going to present, and then they join the call 30 minutes late. This after reminder emails have been exchanged and assurances of attending on the prescribed date. These calls are on Sunday evenings, and those in the Eastern time zone, especially, are on the phone late in order to fulfill their commitment to the organization. If a speaker shows up late, this makes calls longer, and people are anxious to get off the phone when it is that late.  So, let’s all remember that there is always more to stories than we may hear at times.

As president, I am very aware of my other life obligations, and that my officers and friends/affiliate members, have lives beyond HSP.  I understand that my attending only through Thursday indicates a lack of commitment.  However, I submit that I weighed my commitment to HSP against my hardships and feel I made the best compromise I could-I arrived in time to place an ad about functions in the student paper in time to publicize events.  I was available for affiliate role-call and I attended the nominating committee meeting.  I asked at affiliaite role-call if any other members of HSP were present at convention, could they help represent the affilaite durign voting.  No one offered to help.  I learned later, throughout the week, of members who were present, but to heavily committed to other activities to help.  I chose to leave early to honor my commitments to my marriage and my family.  I felt this was the best compromise I could reach given my circumstances.

We welcome input and participation.  I would appreciate hearing from people as things arise.

I intend to hold a business meeting by phone prior to our August 5th conference call. I hope we will have enough paid members on the business meeting part of the call to allow us to have elections. If not, I may need to appoint people to positions that are vacated because current officers cannot continue to serve. Marlene will send out a conference call reminder shortly.

I urge you to attend the call on August 5th.  Let’s discuss what you want out of this affiliate, what part you are willing to take in improving the affiliate and make a plan for the next year if we can.  Please be thinking of ideas.  I expect to discuss current problems and solutions.

Sincerely,

Darian Slayton Fleming
ACB-HSP President

Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 11:38 AM
To: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals 
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] affiliate growth

Actually, at least in this group, that is what we do.  But, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.  We had a conference call in June, and I think that all of 4 of us showed up, and half of that 4 were not going to convention, and the other half were leaving on Wednesday.  This isn't the NFB. Many people do not attend convention, and many who do do not stay the whole time.  I recall Mitch saying on Friday that there were so few people there that he could identify all of the voices that he heard. Perhaps organization business should be shifted to earlier in the week.

Andy

From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of Kevin LaRose
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2012 9:50 AM
To: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] affiliate growth

IMO, a lot of this is stuff that needs to get sorted out before the convention, if at all possible. Since a vast majority of convention business is done on Friday, I think it’s extremely important that the affiliate has a presence then. I have to say it does bug me when affiliates go to the microphone on Sunday night without knowing who the delegate and/or the alternate and/or the nominating committee rep will be. To me, it makes affiliates look really disorganized. I think there needs to be a conference call right before convention on which it can be determined which affiliate members will be attending, and for how long. That way assignments could be made ahead of time. Just a thought.

KL

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