Posted by Barb D. (152.163.201.209) on July 14, 2001 at 11:55:16:
In Reply to: ouch, conventions, Bob P. take note posted by annemarie on July 14, 2001 at 10:28:59:
Annemarie,
I agree with you. #1 - the Bylaws need a lot of work and ARE being worked on as we speak by the Officers and Directors as well as legal counsel. **They were written originally from a "standard" set of bylaws for nonprofit corporations and have been amended several times as people wanted changes. I agree that they are vague and need to be more black and white. But we must conform to state and federal guidelines and that's why its taking a little time to do it. But it should be done soon.
As for convention being voted on by members - I agree with that also. BUT to do this, we'll have to vote on convention several years in advance and that's good also. Since OUCH is so young we haven't had the time so far to do this. If we could get cities to BID on our conventions - say 3 to 5 years in advance- we could get better deals and have a lot longer to plan conventions. This would give the members a chance to SEE where they WANT to go. I've also belonged to organizations that do this and it worked out very well.
We tried that the first year and it did not work out because we had 100 people wanting to go to 100 different places and it was a mess. Until we set up some guidelines for this we can't do it. But once we set up some guidelines (in the bylaws) it will work. But again this will just take a little time.
I have less patience than anyone, but OUCH, as with anything, is still in the crawling stages. Yes, we're two years old and according to some, we should be doing great things, but right now, we've still got some kinks to work out and we can't do that with 200 people arguing every point.
With the members support there are things we can do RIGHT NOW and get OUCH going strong. But some of the other things are going to be slow (maybe not as slow as you may think, but they're not going to happen tomorrow).
What I would suggest is that, instead of name calling and arguing on the MB is that members e-mail the officers and directers with suggestions, complaints and ideas and let's see what we can get done together. No one is trying to be a dictator. Committees need to post reports on what they are doing (and yes, there's something in place for that). Members need to be kept informed of what is going on - non members need to be kept informed so they'll want to be a part of OUCH. People need to volunteer to DO something.
The BOD is just trying to coordinate things and get it together in working order. If the i's aren't dotted and t's aren't crossed we're going to be back to square one and that's certainly not where we want to be.
Hugs BD
P.S. I think it would be neat if we could have several cities come to Vancouver and BID for coventions 2003-4 and 5. Then we could vote on where we wanted to go for those conventions. And besides that = they usually bring lots of good stuff to give away to "intice" us to vote for their city. (One year Orlando brought Mickey AND Minne Mouse and gave away great door prizes). It's a thought. BD