To: Estraro mailing list at Yahoogroups 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 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.