AAUW NC 2006-2007 changes

As announced in the Tar Heel News, there will be a breakfast on Sunday, April 2, for those who are interested in AAUW NC leadership for 2006-2007. We’ve been working hard to make our structure more flexible so these leadership roles will fit better with the lives of busy women across the state. This new structure and the new “expectations” will be unveiled at the breakfast, but some decisions (like the first version of the 06-07 budget) need to get rolled out now, so here’s a preview of those changes.

The “leadership team” will have six major groups:

1. Advocacy – covering the current responsibilities of public policy, international equity, educational equity, liaisons to coalitions such as NCWU, NCVCE, Covenant with NC’s Children, and the Coalition on Aging. Public policy resolutions to be considered by the board or convention would come from this group.
2. Events – covering the current responsibilities of the program vp, the convention local arrangements chair, the person responsible for finding locations for upcoming conventions and board meetings.
3. Communications – the newsletter, the web site and other media relations
4. Fundraising – coordinating efforts to raise money for EF, LAF, AAUW NC and other entities.
5. Membership development – covering the current responsibilities of the membership vp and the college/university chair, as well as leadership development in general. The nominating committee will be asked to coordinate with this group, and programs like the branch recognition program will be this group’s responsibility.
6. Administration – covering the current responsibilities of bylaws chair, resolutions chair (but for public policy – see above), administrative assistant, and historian as well as budget preparation and monitoring, responding to general voice mail/fax/e-mail inquiries, preparing regular communications for the branches, etc.

While all these groups will need to work together and support each other (e.g. Fundraising needs to keep Events up to date on plans for convention, and Communications needs to support all the groups in their efforts), it is hoped that these groups with defined responsibilities will allow people to pick out a particular area where they can make a contribution that fits with their available time commitments. The members of each group will be responsible for defining a few goals for the year, and then checking with each other on the progress towards those goals.

There will also be a few positions/groups with responsibilities that span the groups. In particular, it is hoped that the Diversity Task Force will assist the Membership Development group to ensure that all groups include a variety of perspectives and that our overall programs are attractive to new members. In addition, the members of the Executive Committee will split responsibilities for tracking what’s going on in the groups so that when the Executive Committee meets it will have information from all the areas.

The Executive Committee approved this structure in principle and voted that the 2006-2007 budget will be prepared with this structure in mind. The Finance Committee has prepared the following budget using these guidelines:

06-07 Budget: v3/14/06

If you have comments on the specifics, please return them by 3/24 so they can be incorporated in the version considered at the board meeting on 3/31. You’ll note that each group has a line item “group expenses” that is meant to cover the members’ travel costs or other projects as decided by the members of the group and reconciled with the needs of the other groups and the projected income. Those discussions will be a major topic of the summer board meeting when the groups set their goals for 06-07.

So, please consider if you can be part of the 06-07 leadership team! Which group would you like to join? What, specifically, would you like to contribute? How can you use AAUW NC to advance equity for all women and girls in your community? Come to the Sunday breakfast if you can — and if you won’t be in New Bern for the convention, watch for announcements of other discussions as we get prepared for 06-07.

Thanks, all!

Nancy Shoemaker
AAUW NC president-elect