Board members
I have not received a single comment in support of the move to extend
terms. Not one. I have, however, received quite a few comments actively
opposed to it.
Amongst those comments was the view that because the changes happen at
an AGM which is generally attended by less than 5% of the membership,
there was never any real debate about proposed changes to the
constitution of our organisation.
If, as appears likely, the Board goes ahead with pushing for this
change, I would ask that a better effort is made to have a public
debate on the Article changes than has occurred in the past. I realise
that this is hard to do - but failure to properly engage the membership
would be a significant failure of responsibility. Given the
undemocratic way the GFA officers are elected, moving to extend their
term of office without a significant effort to engage the membership in
debate is far too easily seen as a flagrant attempt by those in power
to strengthen their grip on power.
Some ideas about how such a debate might occur...
- Use the web site to provide a detailed commentary on the current
situation and the proposed changes; then, keep that article listed on
the front page until the time of the actual meeting. Make sure the
article contains a link to the GFA Articles so members can easily find
these. The article needs to contain details of how members can have
their say on this issue through contacting their regional association
and also detail the proxy voting requirements.
- Joomla, which runs our website, has a number of modules that
allow
for polling opinions. Set this up and ask what members think about this
proposal. Require registration on the website before you allow voting
of course, but this could well provide significant input (for or
against the change) in terms of the general membership who cannot be at
the AGM and yet whose voices should be heard.
- Put the website article in the magazine - probably more than once.
- Our membership database now includes the email address of a
significant majority of our membership. We should use this to
communicate directly with the membership on this issue. We could send
out an email to every known email address that contains the same
information as the article on the web site and in the magazine.
- Request every regional organisation to include discussion of the
article changes and distribution of information about proxy voting.
- The central administration also has the contact info for every
club and the GFA could use this to write to each club explaining what
the changes are and why the Board sees the need for them. Then request
each club to post this information on their noticeboard and include
reference to it in their club newsletter.
Furthermore, the communication effort needs to be protracted as well as
extensive. Ask yourselves: if you are concerned that the membership
might not like what you are doing, why are you doing it? If there are
good reasons for the change not understood by the membership, then it
is your job to communicate them.
If you are not prepared to put in a significant effort as a board
rather than relying solely on the regional representatives, your
motives for the change will understandably be called into question.
Over to you.
--
Robert Hart [email protected]
+61 (0)438 385 533 http://www.hart.wattle.id.au
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