OUTCOME CAN BE BEST PRACTICES DISCOVERY

The Council has scheduled director-lead area meetings for 10:00am Friday, October 27th, the early part of the Council of Chapters annual meeting. The meetings should be attended by chapter presidents or their designated representatives/proxies, as well as other interested attendees from the chapters.

The agenda for the area meeting is created by the area director and all are likely to be somewhat different; however, here are some thoughts on the general directions these meetings usually take.

Some assembly (preparation) is required.

These meetings are very informal, often conducted within the near vicinity of the general meeting, over coffee if provided, with a very flexible agenda. In the past, the meetings were used to share information, solve problems, and even tell sea stories. It ’s a chance to get better acquainted, have a social time, raise certain issues and concerns, and generally prepare for the upcoming debates and voting.

One basic reason for the meetings is to have presidents provide a summary of chapter activities over the past year, with a focus on opportunities encountered as well as challenges faced and perhaps overcome. On Saturday morning at the EXCOM meeting, time will be taken to receive area director reports, and a major portion of the report will be to describe how the affiliated chapters are getting along, difficulties obtaining leadership, the current status of new member recruiting, what’s happening with membership totals, and the like. It would be useful if each chapter president would provide a summary report to the area director in advance of the Rally so the director will be in a position to provide the secretary a written report for the record/minutes; with that done, meeting time can be used for a discussion of late developments and newly identified trends.

It is important to know specific details of chapter health and welfare issues in order to both report trend information to National MOAA and to respond with different kinds of support should the chapter ask for assistance from the Council.

A second major reason for meeting is to survey the chapters for best practices information. A number of presidents and others indicated a desire to attend the Rally especially if information on best practices will be provided. The area meeting is an opportunity to do that. Some chapters are having success recruiting new members using effective techniques; we should share this information with others, and we’d like to do it. Others are having extraordinary good luck finding new chapter leaders, and often it’s because of an earlier introduced succession plan; we’d like to provide information about those plans and how they work. On Saturday morning, the area directors will report to the EXCOM on these best practices, and over time a summary will be made of findings and shared with all affiliated chapters, and probably by means of the weblog.

We’ll be pressing our luck to do more because an hour goes by very quickly.

But if there is time, it might be important to raise the issue of the upcoming strategic plan debate to take place beginning right after 2:00pm. It would be useful in advance to know everyone’s feelings about planning and specifically the CDR Sammons plan. There hasn’t been much feedback to date and we really don’t know if there is support for a plan, or if there is, various provisions of the plan. We could probably save a lot of time in the debate if we could offer a united position on the plan itself or certain aspects of the plan.

By the close of the area meeting, the area director needs to be in a position to provide a summary report to the presidents beginning at 11:00am.

Again, it would be very useful if chapter presidents would e-mail the area director a short report of chapter activities over the past year, to include significant achievements, opportunities, and challenges/problems encountered. Please provide significant statistics such as current membership levels. Last year our concerns focused on member recruitment and the difficulty of obtaining chapter leadership. Let your area director know how things are going in those areas as well as other trends developing at this time. And one last thing, if your chapter will be changing presidents please let us know at the area meeting, and later provide the name and e-mail contact information for the new president.

The area meeting offers a unique opportunity for bonding and the sharing of what sometimes proves to be important information.

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