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Let’s focus on culture building. Every policy, standard, and institutionalized practice in time shapes an organization’s culture. If the Spirit of Cavet is the culture we want, then everything we do should support that.
We are all autonomous speakers who work together to build a bigger pie for everyone. We all choose to be bound by an agreed upon code of ethics, but we do not try to tell one another how they must operate their business. Instead, we offer suggestions and best practices that are compelling enough (because of the benefit they will create) that we adopt the process.
If this works so well for our own businesses I recommend we keep it that way for our chapters as well. We agree upon a limited list of ideals that form an organizational credo. Beyond that, we allow chapters to continue operating independently. When national want’s the chapters to do something (not have a meeting that prevents members from attending Winter Conference, for example), find a way of presenting the idea with enough internal value that the chapters will voluntarily comply (because of the benefit it generates).
Let me flesh this one out a little more to illustrate my point: NSA gets $495 for each member who attends a conference. A chapter gets $20-40 for each member who attends a local meeting. National could easily make it worth a chapters while to cancel their meeting and encourage people to attend instead by following these two simple steps:
1-Give the chapter $40 for every chapter member who attends a conference. This encourages chapters to promote the event and get everyone who can possibly afford it to go. I don’t mind paying my admin a 10% bonus for booking me with someone because I’m getting 90% I otherwise might not have had. Same is true for chapters. This removes the financial incentive for a chapter to hold their own meeting.
2-Offer a $40 live webinar (with a 50/50 chapter revenue split) of 2 power-packed hours of the conference. Chapters can show this at their monthly meeting that would have conflicted with the conference or cancel their meeting outright and allow their members to log in and participate live from home. Either way, the chapter is still able to provide great content to their members (who could not have attended the conference) and they still get the same $20 profit per head they would have gotten from a regular meeting. Wow, this becomes a no-brainer for me as a chapter president or program chair. I get the same money but don’t have to do the work to put on a meeting. For NSA it’s also great advertising of what a member could get next time around from attending the WHOLE conference.
Both parties get what they want and nobody feels forced into doing something they didn’t want to do. Everyone feels like we are in fact making a bigger pie.
Keep Smilin’
Marty
Immediate Past President
NSA Mt West
Please disregard this, I just left it on the wrong page.