To: Estraro mailing list at Yahoogroups <elna-estraro@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: elna-anoncoj@yahoogroups.com
From: David Wolff
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 22:48:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [estraro] Some notes on ELNA (part 1)

Hi all,

Here are some notes on ELNA as an organization and its problems.

* ELNA's needs

About fifteen years ago, having watched ELNA from the inside for some
years, I concluded that our lack of progress was due to neglect of three
key areas: resources (in particular fundraising), local groups, and
publicity.  Certainly, people can disagree as to whether these
particular three areas are the most urgent or only keys to success.  For
example, Kent Jones recently sent a message to the Board urging us to
treat our members better by establishing a committee to advocate for
them.  Kent has made this suggestion every year or two for many years.
But in any case, it was clear that ELNA was not dealing with crucial
needs.

For a long time, I urged ELNA to work on these problems.  It is
impossible for "everyone" to be responsible for (for example) publicity;
it is a management truism that if everyone is responsible for something,
then in fact no one is responsible for it.  ELNA would not set up
committees or commissioners to be responsible, and no one volunteered.
As President, I struggled to find volunteers for these areas, with very
little success.

It has been many years without progress -- years without even being able
to set up committees or commissioners for these areas.  Just this year,
the Board has had a long discussion of where to cut costs because of our
ongoing deficit.  Find more money?  Hardly mentioned.  Become more
effective?  Only in the most insignificant areas.  Instead the reaction
is to slash the organization and deliver fewer services.

I acknowledge that some small advances have been made, although usually
by individual volunteers instead of the Board or the organization.  We
have the perfect toll-free telephone number (if only we were getting it
out to the public, and if only it didn't drive away informpetintoj by
refusing to take their names).  We have a very good website (if only we
told more people about it).  NASK is still going strong (again, it could
use more publicity to gain more students).  Yet it is obvious that the
general public knows almost nothing about Esperanto and less about ELNA.
Our membership count has at best hit one thousand, in a country of 280
million people.  I refuse to believe that only one person in 280,000
wants to join ELNA.  I believe instead that ELNA has failed.

* Failure of ELNA to meet its needs

After all these years and all this effort, I am now convinced that our
difficulty is structural:  that something about our organization
prevents us from solving our problems.  Meta-problems, if you will.
ELNA is seriously dysfunctional.  It has made no progress on its key
needs, nor even understood why it has made no progress.  Some of this is
due to our Board members; some is due to our By-Laws; no doubt some is
due to other causes.  A brief description of these follows, although I
admit that I have less confidence in this analysis than in my earlier
description of our key needs.

First, we have nominated and elected too many people to the Board who do
not work to improve our organization.  It is common for Board members to
*not* participate in discussions, to *not* take on the tasks that ELNA
needs to accomplish, to *not* contribute anything except words.  (And
since we have never lacked for words, this is not necessarily helpful.)
Too many Board members have no experience with nonprofit organizations.
No expertise in fundraising or publicity.  And I do not recall ever
seeing someone make an effort to learn these things.  I was disappointed
to see how often some Directors of a national organization would promise
to do a task and then fail to do it.  I expected broken promises at the
local level, but when someone agrees to be a Director of a national
group, they really should try to keep their promises.

Second, I think our By-Laws are inadequate.  They create offices but do
not define the responsibilities or the authority of these offices, so it
is too easy for everyone to wait for someone else, or to simply do
nothing.  A flexible set of By-Laws is a good thing, of course, but ours
is beyond flexible: it's limp.  This is probably a reaction to the
Connor / EANA problems, but it is likely that the solution has gone too
far and created a different set of problems.

* Possible remedies

In the next message I have listed some changes to our By-Laws and Board
Regulations that may help.  Some of them would significantly change the
By-Laws.  I do not see this as a difficulty.  Our organization is
currently so badly broken that any change could hardly make things
worse.

It is possible that ELNA could significantly improve its effectiveness
without any of these changes.  If several Board members worked to learn
how to run an organization, and were willing to spend the time and
energy to work together, even the current By-Laws might work.  I have
not seen this happen in the past twenty years.  Indeed, I have seen just
the opposite.  One long-term and apparently respected Board member feels
that elected officials of ELNA have no obligation to do anything for
ELNA besides discussion, and has repeatedly opposed any efforts to
change this.  Therefore I see no likelihood that this will happen.

* Personal feelings

I am resigning as a member of the Board of Directors of ELNA.  I have
been on the Board since 1983 (except for one year), including six years
as President of ELNA.  In those twenty years of working for this
organization, I have seen so little progress that I can no longer stand
to spend time and energy on it.  I am tired, I see no hope for ELNA as
it currently stands, and I believe my efforts on the Board are for
naught.

Let me be clear that I have considerable hope for Esperanto as a
language and as a movement.  I am not resigning as an ordinary member of
ELNA.  I intend to occasionally do small projects (but only ones I feel
like doing).  I continue to work as a volunteer in my local area.  It is
the structure of ELNA as an organization, as a tool to bring individuals
together for a common purpose, that seems hopelessly dysfunctional to
me.

So with great reluctance I am following wise words from another sphere
of activity: "Change your organization, or change your organization."

I am handing over ownership of the elna-estraro mailing list to Alex and
removing my address from the list.  If you wish to contact me, feel free
to do so at my e-mail address, paper-mail address, or by phone (all in
the latest Adresaro).

Respectfully submitted,

David Wolff
11 April 2003


To: Estraro mailing list at Yahoogroups <elna-estraro@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: elna-anoncoj@yahoogroups.com
From: David Wolff
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 22:49:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [estraro] Some notes on ELNA (part 2)

* Suggestions

The following changes should be made, at least as experiments, to see if
they will reduce some of the unresolved issues in By-Laws.  If they do
not help, ELNA can always reverse them after a trial period of a few
years.

1a. Add (at least) these standing committees to the By-Laws:
Resources/Fundraising, Local Groups, Publicity, Membership.  To make
sure that these are filled, the President of ELNA will automatically
chair any standing committee that does not have a chairperson for 90
days.  A brief charter for each committee is needed in the By-Laws.

1b. Instead of (1a), reduce the size of the Board to seven or nine
members.  Each Director will have a specific responsibility (Resources,
Publicity, Local Groups etc) to go along with the current President, VP,
Secretary, and Treasurer.  This will help the Board be more responsive
to events and proposals, and will reduce the space for non-active
Directors.

2. Add to the By-Laws, as Board member responsibilities, quarterly
reports and contacting new members, to make absolutely clear to Board
members that these are not optional.  (Both of these, as in the current
Board Regulations, could be waived for specific Board members by the
President).  Missing two consecutive reports means that the Director has
resigned unless the President decides otherwise within 45 days of the
second missed report.  All quarterly reports will be publicly available
to ELNA members at least on our web site.

3. Add Board member responsibilities to the By-Laws.  (Below is a list
of responsibilities for the National Space Society.  These could be used
as a starting point.)

4. Board discussions in English.  That happens to be the native language
of most people in ELNA.  We are demanding that current Board members
volunteer twice, first to be a Board member, then to become fluent in a
foreign language.  Undoubtedly some "eternaj komencantoj" who have
useful skills but not a command of Esperanto are being scared off.  I
realize this puts one or two current Board members, whose native
language is not English, at a disadvantage.  And I am familiar with the
arguments for using Esperanto.  I strongly believed them and supported
them for years.  After twenty years, we have obviously not proven to the
world that Esperanto works.  I am forced to suspect that this is hurting
us more than it helps us.  The point of any group's Board is to further
the goals of the organization, not to prove a PR point.  Using the local
national language can open up the Board to dozens of people who could
contribute.

5. Enlarge the powers of the President, to more rapidly deal with
matters and to make it possible to push projects forward more easily.

6. Nominating Committee: This currently must be all non-Board members,
no doubt to avoid the possibility that the Board would nominate only its
own members and others would not be able to become candidates.  But
non-Board members often do not know other members well.  I suggest that
members of the Nominating Committee may be Board members, or perhaps a
maximum of three out of the five.

I also recommend these non-By-Laws actions:

1. ELNA should begin a formal process of training candidates and Board
members in normal organizational skills.  These are available at low or
no cost from non-profit groups that assist other non-profits, from
books, and on the web.  Every LK should have training sessions.  ELNA
should make sure that the By-Laws, Board regulations, and the
Introduction for Board Members (or a similar document) are in the hands
of every potential candidate well before they decide whether to actually
run.

2. Every Board member should consider it a moral obligation to improve
his or her organizational skills, and to teach those skills to other
Board members and to potential candidates.

3. Every Board member should consider it a moral obligation to follow
the By-Laws and Board regulations, or else resign from the Board.


Expectations for NSS Board Members (_Ad Astra_, Nov/Dec 2001)

Each board member should:

1. Participate in the determination of the organization's mission and
   purpose.

2. Participate in the selection and review of the executive director.

3. Participate in raising funds for the organization.

4. Participate in financial oversight of the organization.

5. Understand the budgeting process and be prepared to participate in
   it.

6. Determine and monitor the organization's programs and services.

7. Enhance the organization's public image.

8. Assess and try to improve the board's performance.

9. Suggest possible nominees to the board who are people of achievement
and distinction who can make significant contributions to the work of
the board and the Society's progress.

10. Serve in leadership positions or undertake special assignments
willingly and enthusiastically when asked.  Actively serve on at least
one committee.

11. Attend all board meetings.

12. Prepare for and participate in board meetings, mail votes, and
committee hearings, including appropriate organizational activities.
Ask timely and substantive questions at board and committee meetings
consistent with their conscience and convictions, while supporting the
majority decision on issues decided by the board.  Maintain
confidentiality of the board's executive sessions.  Suggest agenda items
periodically for board and committee meetings to ensure that significant
policy-related matters are addressed.

13. Avoid asking for special favors from the staff, including special
requests for extensive information, without at least prior consultation
with the chair of the Executive Committee or appropriate committee
chairperson.

14. Treat each other in a civil and professional manner at all times.

Adopted by the NSS Executive Committee, 5 December 1998.

<end>