by Lorraine D'Ambruoso
As a member of CLTA, you know that you have officers, both elected and appointed, who can help you with things such as dues, conference registration, etc. You also know that your affiliate has a representative who attends all Board meetings and represents the interests of your affiliate as well as those of the organization as a whole. But what kinds of actions take place at CLTA's Board meetings?
We follow the normal process of any meeting, beginning with the minutes of the previous meeting. We hear reports covering our financial situation, our membership numbers, our conference planning progress and newsletter updates. We also tackle many weighty issues, such as how to improve our fiscal situation, when to plan our future conferences, how to address the issues of the web site and the on-line newsletter, assessing the progress of the planning for the Summer Seminar. At the last meeting, we concluded a rewrite of our association's by-laws (thank you to Sue McKee) and voted to accept them. Future activities will involve leadership training for members who show an interest in taking leadership roles at their affiliate level or at the state level. This will be a function of the Futures Committee (thank you, Carol Moir). Another task facing us in the future will be rewriting our conference manual. All of these activities are time-consuming and carried out by Board members who volunteer their timethey receive no compensation for their work. But it is work that is vital to the well-being of our association.
When the Board does make crucial decisions, how does it decide? CLTA's decision-making process is guided by, in the order of importance, the possible:
Decisions are approached with serious consideration of all of the issues and the potential results. I, as your Executive Director, would like to take this opportunity to personally thank all of the members of the CLTA Board of Directors, whose efforts and contributions are so important and whose dedication makes CLTA the wonderful family of professionals that it is.