[MR] re: Value of membership - a request

[Rick Steeves]

Greetings citizens of Atlantia.

Speaking from experience, the BoD greatly cares and respects the opinions 
it receives. Indeed, it takes a VERY small percentage of the membership to 
actually make changes.

It wouldn't surprise me if the membership is not better served under the 
current system than a wholly democratic one. If the BoD could do nothing 
without a 51% vote of some percentage of the membership (even of those 
votes received -- heaven forfend it took 51% of the total membership), then 
a small vocal group couldn't make changes, and I promise you, small vocal 
groups DO get the attention of the Board, and have the power to implement 
changes.

The membership responds in absurdly low numbers. The Board's letter and 
proposal was referenced in the March 2002 Acorn, and available to all 
members for several months. For all claims of disenfranchisement, a 
response rate of < 5% shows that most members don't care.

And, it's not like changes themselves aren't then changed or modified based 
on the response of the membership - historically, it looks to me like 
making changes are the only way the Board can get a response out of the 
membership at large.

If EVERY member of Atlantia responded to EVERY Board requests for comments, 
Atlantia could overwhelmingly affect the rest of the Known World, based 
solely on our comments.  In this kingdom one barony alone could be 25% of 
the last response rate.

I challenge you, citizens of Atlantia. In the next 6 months, respond to ONE 
item listed by the Board, and convince one other person to respond to :
- requests for comments (You can hear about them automatically from the 
announcements at sca,org mailing list, subscribe at 
announcements-request at sca.org, subject: subscribe),
-- comments on one of the Board nominees,
-- or recommend someone for Board membership.

Or let members of other kingdoms speak your Voice for you.

Corwyn
Seneschal
(don't forget to tell them things that are GOOD so they know to keep doing 
those things)

>From: Gorm of Berra <gormofberra at earthlink.net>
>Subject: Re: [MR] re: Value of membership - a request
>
>Well here's the inverse of the problem.
>
>WHy don't people communicate with the BoD?
>
>At least some of the problem is that there is an impression that we, the
>average member, have no say in the matters of the BoD.



Rick Steeves
ricks at duke.edu                  http://www.sinister.net