Guest blogger AMAPCEO Director Theresa Anderson Butcher: Engaging the Membership An Argument for Adequate Resourcing of the Chapter Executives Part 2 of 2

This is a continuation of Theresa Anderson-Butchers blog post on Membership Engagement.  You can read part 1 here

Moving Forward – How to Address the Gaps

How many of you saw benefit last year with the resources we allocated to mobilization? Was there better engagement of our members? Did we get value for those expenditures? Did our members provide positive feedback on our efforts and those of staff?

Do you believe, as I do, that maintaining a higher level of funding and providing more leave to Chapter Executives to engage and educate members would reap a positive benefit?

Let’s look at this more practically. I am going to make some assumptions as follows:

1.     AMAPCEO staff is responsible for the preparation of all training and communications materials.

2.     Each chapter has full access to a teleconference line to conduct Chapter Executive meetings.

3.     Leave time for chapter business can be allocated to any members of the Chapter Executive Committee.

4.     Leave time can be requested on a more flexible schedule based on sufficient notice to the employer.

5.     The Chapter Executive puts together an annual plan for outreach and member engagement. The plan can be template and then adapted for individual chapter needs.

Regardless of chapter size, number of members or geography, both time and resources will be required for appropriate outreach. For example, a regional chapter represents a smaller population, but covers a larger geography; a ministry chapter represents a larger population over a smaller geography. Are the costs the same to engage members equally? I would say that they’re close but spent on different items. For example, higher refreshment/meeting room costs for ministry chapters, and higher travel and teleconference/videoconference costs for regional chapters.

If we can allocate leave time to Chapter Executives, the travel time for regional chapters could be significantly reduced allowing Executive members closest to the membership to engage as opposed to having the Chapter Chair travel longer distances. This would be the same for ministry chapters as well.

It takes time and resources to build and engaged membership. We have four years before the next OPS collective agreement is negotiated. This is the largest population of members and we need to use the time between now and then to build engagement and a sense of community within the membership. We need to provide the resources to do so.

If you truly want an engaged membership and if you truly want to be supported by the Association so you can personally more actively engage, then I ask you to vote for those candidates who are committed to giving you the resources we need to make sure every member, if they choose to become more active in the Association, is able to meaningfully engage regardless of their geographic location, family status or accommodation needs.

We cannot allow the continuance of systemic barriers that prevent members from engaging with each other or participating in the leadership of the Association should they choose.

If this is a concept you would like to see explored, built upon and implemented, please vote for candidates like James Dawson, Dianne Colville and Theresa Anderson-Butcher who are committed to making this happen.

Guest blogger AMAPCEO Director Theresa Anderson Butcher: Engaging the Membership An Argument for Adequate Resourcing of the Chapter Executives

Part 1 of 2

Thank you James for allowing me space on your blog to talk about an issue of mutual interest.

Like you, I too am looking forward to this year’s Annual Delegates’ Conference more than ever. This is going to be the year of change and the decisions we make this year will determine our future direction.

Those of you who have attended the last five conferences may recall that I am a champion of change in the way AMAPCEO engages our members and our activists. I believe that we need to provide adequate resources to our Chapter Executives so that they can engage our members more meaningfully at the local level. We cannot use a cookie-cutter approach to member engagement as our chapters may have unique needs in how they reach out to their membership. This uniqueness can be in demographic composition, geographic disbursement, number of ministries represented, BPS inclusion and building location and accessibility.  Regardless of the above, the chapter executive should be the team that sets its engagement plan and receives the support of the leadership and staff to execute the plan.

Engaging the Chapter Executive is troublesome given that the AMAPCEO Constitution only allows leave for Chapter Chairs to perform his/her duties. The leave includes on half-day every three weeks, or approximately 17 half days per year.

The duties of a Chapter Chair are two-fold: governance, as a voting member of Provincial Council; and member engagement with responsibilities to ensure that chapter members are informed of both issues of governance and issues around the application of the collective agreements that pertain to his/her members.

There are six regular Provincial Council meetings per year therefore; the governance responsibilities I would suggest occupy, at a minimum, six of the half-day leaves. Depending on the demands of the work schedule, many Chapter Chairs cannot download/print the materials until the weekend. If they plan to meet with their Executive, it would have to be in the day or two prior to the Council meeting.

Chapter Executive meetings are often held over lunch hour.  In regional chapters or chapters with disbursed Executive membership, the meeting is often by teleconference call. AMAPCEO does not have a dedicated teleconference line for Chapters to use to perform this duty.

So you can see, without even going into the member engagement responsibilities, much of the leave and a significant amount of personal time could be occupied in the governance responsibilities.

Member engagement can mean different things to different people. For some members, a simple informative or welcoming email is sufficient engagement; for others, an opportunity for an in-person discussion is more fruitful.  Both approaches present challenges for Chapter Chairs, as they do not always have access to their member’s home contact data for correspondence or outreach, or are not physically located in the same building, or the same town for that matter.  How then do Chapter Chairs fulfill their obligations for member engagement and education?

The Constitution only allows for the Chapter Chair to have leave for chapter business. In order to ensure broader engagement, we need to make that leave accessible to other Chapter Executives. It takes more than one person to build a community and volunteers need to be given time to fulfill the expectations of their volunteer roles.  Outreach and engagement must be planned and properly executed. It is not an organic process; particularly in this day and age of teleworking and alternate work arrangements where people work varying hours and a lunch hour is no longer an hour in many circumstances.

In the 2015 budget, you will read on lines 29 and 30 that we have allocated $30,000 (0.33%) of our total expenses to cover the costs of all Chapter activities and the expenses for Board members to attend a chapter meeting for twenty-three chapters.

These are all the monies allocated for chapters to get together and build their community. I know that for many years, chapters have not had the time or capacity to get together because there isn’t sufficient leave time for activists to organize the events or meet with members during the day. We cannot expect huge engagement at the local level when we do not expend sufficient resources to allow for such engagement.  

Read the next instalment .....part 2 of 2