What Happened at the Branch Leadership Crisis Meeting? By Liz Jordan
On Wednesday evening, March 16, more than 35 members signed into a branch meeting, open to the entire membership. The goal of the meeting was to help solve a leadership crisis: to find members willing to serve the branch.
Who Will Lead? The annual Nominating Committee has not been able to find a volunteer[s] to serve as President or Co-Presidents or as Program Director or Co-Directors.
Other branch leadership needs discussed were for volunteers to lead our Tech Trek Program and one to lead our Public Policy activities.
Job Descriptions are available from Nominating Committee Chair Liz Jordan and/or by clicking on the Membership tab through to the Members Only link of the AAUW Sacramento website sacramento-ca.aauw.net.
Survey: The membership was alerted to this meeting by eblast and each eblast contained a link to a survey about branch activities. The survey gleaned responses from about a quarter of the membership and then comprised the focus for the meeting discussion. (See article by Gloria Yost about what members responded). The members attending this meeting were able to see some of the members responses, and then members were randomly assigned to one of five break-out rooms where they discussed one of the questions, as well.
The five questions from the survey, then discussed by the break-out groups, were:
- What are your reasons for being a member of AAUW Sacramento?
- Our mission is to empower women and girls. How do you think we can motivate our members to participate in mission-based activities?
- What reasons do you have for serving or not serving on a committee or as a board leader?
- Do you ordinarily participate in Branch meetings and programs? Why or why not?
- If we reduced the number of our branch outreach activities, which ones would you eliminate? Or change and in what way? These four activities were discussed:
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- Scholarship – women 25 years or older, returning to college
- Speech Trek – high school kids speak to a question about gender equity
- Tech Trek – six middle school girls who have talent but may lack motivation go to STEM Camp on a college campus for a week.
- NCCWSL – National Conference of College Women Student Leaders – conference once a year over Memorial Weekend at University Maryland.
Discussion: Volunteer recorders in each of the five breakout rooms kept notes and reported back to the larger meeting during the last half hour. The discussion was wide-ranging, and all possible ways to restructure branch activity were on the table. A strong possibility of a Strategic Planning Committee to work on streamlining branch activities and leadership positions is under discussion.
Please: Anyone willing to serve in either of the open board positions or on the Strategic Planning Committee is strongly encouraged to call or write Liz Jordan, Nancy Lawrence, Cherril Peabody, Linda Sparks or Vicki Nicholson. Please see the directory for contact information.