SOS 2014
State of the The Augustan Society, Inc. — August 2014
The Augustan Society has had a so-so year. We have not made significant advances in any but a few isolated areas, but neither have we had any significant failures other than a failure to thrive and progress. Allow me to itemize:
- Our membership numbers (and too our bank account) are stagnant. While the website continues to bring in a dribble, it is not sufficient to replace those lost to age and attrition. More importantly, our membership is not large enough to fund our progress, partly because of a deliberate decision not to raise dues so rapidly we would lose significant numbers.
- The Chivalry Department has been making good progress on a thorough reevaluation of our list of recognized orders. This isn’t always a pleasant process, but it should help us recover the reputation we once had in this field. Recognitions have been handled promptly, but we’ve seen no new petitions since the price increase.
- The Genealogy Department still has no chairman, and we are limping along, reviewing lineages on an ad hoc basis. We do have a plan to sponsor a lineage report generator in our open source genealogy software (Gramps), which should greatly aid the production and standardization of same.
- The Descents from Antiquity Project is moving ahead with a new set of charts as fast as Ye Editor can keep up. We still await a report explaining how all of the Egypt-to-Charlemagne theories were disproved.
- The Heraldry Department is likewise nearly idle, but for a couple of Committee logos and the Arms Registration Committee, which is generating a great volume of correspondence, but few registrations — some having been in review for over a decade.
- There is essentially no History Department. The only sign of life is the First Peoples Committee, but so far we’ve only seen discussion of a logo. A charter and web page update would be nice.
- The Royalty & Nobility Department is not quite as active as Chivalry, with a few reviews handled promptly, but no other activity. Indeed, they have declined to participate in several proposals.
- The Communications Department has a few successes, and much potential unrealized for lack of volunteers.
- The increased frequency of Augustæum has kept us in the minds of our members, and with Assistant Editor Phillip de Souza in charge of nagging for input, it may well grow a bit.
- Under new Editor John Tibbetts, The Augustan Omnibus now appears to be on a strong footing and ready to progress in all ways but having sufficient submissions to maintain the present size and frequency.
- Slow progress is being made on the new Descents from Antiquity charts and Germond’s book. This is balanced by a complete lack of action on both Vigil and a proposed volume on Chinese royalty.
- Our main website continues to grow as time is made available for it. The Store site continues to generate revenue, but is in severe need of a technology upgrade. The Library site is purring, thanks to the excellent software in use. Our one failing is that we have not been able to figure out how to install a wiki engine on the server. Perhaps someone will step forward to help with this.
- Email has been a serious problem this year, with our domain registrar, our email forwarding system, and lately our webmail service all flaking out on us. We now have a new domain registrar, our own email forwarding system, and have migrated from our webmail service to another that uses local clients to store and read mail (with webmail available as a backup for travel). Much time consumed, but fortunately very little money.
- The Library is one of the high spots. Funding was made available to double our floor space, and we’ve filled the new room with used library shelving. The process of getting the books out of the storage boxes and onto those shelves in proper order is moving more slowly than I would like (about 40% done at present), but the books are now far more accessible. Cataloging has been slowed of late by competing demands on our Assistant Treasurer, but does continue as time permits.
- Our Museum collection … continues to gather dust. Not much else to be said. This will take local labor to impact, and right now Consuls have their hands over-full.
- The Sub-Groups have been a problem. While some activity is seen in the form of the Rose Newsletter, there is also much political turmoil. The other groups are dormant, though that’s to be expected with the lineage groups.
What’s left is more philosophical, and we’ve seen some things this year that concern us—and some that have the potential to bring down the Society.
We have been working hard these past seven years to set up the Board to perform their duty of running the organization. To this end, we have reduced the number of Directors, increased meeting frequency, and made several changes to the By-Laws and Standing Rules. In some ways, things are moving faster and more smoothly than ever before.
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 Consuls may have your trust in abundant measure, we do not have all the skills this Society needs, nor are we available to put that many hours of time on task. More worrying, should either of us be struck down, we do not believe the Board is ready to articulate the tasks needed and to generate the salary that would be required to replace us. Thus relying on an individual or two—even 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 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. 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.) 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.
The immediate need is for the Long-Range Plan is to help navigate us to the far side of “the hump” in a way that does not require a long-term reliance on the availability and generosity of the present Consuls, who may be long gone before we reach the far shore in any event.
This will require more dedication and time from our Directors than we have seen, on average. This will require fresh ideas and new approaches to old problems. This will require additional volunteers to bring in talents not presently available. And it will require a Board who will take the reigns and guide this work through to the end.
(When your Consuls accepted their present roles, we agreed to provide the Society space in our home at $1 each the first year, doubling each year thereafter. 2015 will see the Society paying the two of us $1000. In 2018 that will grow to $10,000; in 2021 to $100,000. Our intent here was never to be rapacious, only to give the Board an easy start coupled to an incentive to move. It is well past time to start that motion.)
It won’t be easy. It won’t be fun. It will take many hours of thought and negotiation. It will take more members than we now have. It will take more volunteers than we now have. It may well take new Directors, too. But this is the duty of any Board of Directors: To guide the organization, to ensure that it survives, and to keep it true to it’s principles.
While your Consuls have a lot of work on their plates, this particular job is yours. Please get started on it.
Respectfully Submitted, Bruce A. Metcalf, OAE, and Marta Metcalf, FAS, Consuls
