The concern stems from the tendency of some on this Board to disengage, and to “let Bruce handle it”. It was also a major disappointment to us when the Board exempted themselves from the obligation to support the programs they advocated.
It is possible to run an organization like this with a weak board and a strong executive director. It requires an executive who can garner the trust of the Board and who can dedicate the needed skills. Unfortunately, while I we may have your trust in abundant measure, I we do not have all the skills this Society needs, nor am I are we available to put that many hours of time on task. More worrying, should I either of us be struck down, I we do not believe the Board is ready to articulate the tasks needed and to generate the salary that would be required to replace meus. Thus relying on an individualor two—even one were they as worthy as Rod Hartwell—is in the long term, a formula for failure.
However, with a strong Board that is actually running the organization, office staff need be only that. Hiring someone to run the printer, mail the magazines, and update the web site is a far more manageable task than finding an executive director—and one far more affordable.
To this end, it troubles us not no small amount that the Board has been dragging their feet on the development of a [[Long-Range Plan]]. It takes very little wisdom to understand that the present Consuls are not immortal, and it is the legal and moral obligation of the Board of Directors of this corporation to address that inevitability. I We encourage the Board to turn to this project with greater vigor.
The more immediate task, and one that any reasonable long-range plan is near certain to include, is the growth of the membership. Consuls alone cannot make that happen. (Okay, yes, the web site we built is our primary source of new members, but that’s not something we can do more of.) I We recently sent our [[Marketing Chairman]] a challenge to develop a membership campaign that will bring us one new member per week for the next five years. That may seem an insurmountable task, but it is the minimum we will need to get past “the hump”.
What is “the hump”? It is that our Society is at an awkward and unsustainable stage. We are too large to fit into someone’s spare bedroom and be managed by a few casual volunteers. But we are too small to afford a facility where we could bring more volunteers and eventually paid staff to propel us into our future. Getting over “the hump” will be challenging. We have a large physical collection that will require more space than most groups, but we also have a substantial (if still insufficient) investment fund to help.