Next Steps
There’s much to be accomplished during the next four years, and your nominees are ready to make it happen: development of a strategic plan, reconsideration of our committee structure, enhanced communication, as well as succession planning.
- Strategic Plan
- Committee Structure
- Communication
- Succession Planning
First, we’ll work with the membership to draft a strategic plan—not a scattershot approach of random good ideas. We’ll begin by holding town meetings at Summer Nationals to hear from all members of the fencing community about their concerns, and to get their reactions to our initial ideas. Even more important, we’ll want to hear about their thoughts for how to improve all that the organization does. We’ll also ask that members respond to an online survey about new directions. The Board of Directors will spend a majority of its September meeting crafting the plan and determining next steps—next steps with specific goals and timelines. The plan will form the basis of our work for the coming quad; we’ll monitor our progress and evaluate any new ideas in terms of how they fit with our plan.
Part of the strategic plan follow-up will be a reconsideration of our committee structure. What committees are necessary to meet our strategic goals? Would appointment of short-term task forces with focussed mandates be more efficient and effective? As appropriate, we will take that route. We’ll seek new volunteers as members of these groups—they will be critical to our accomplishing what are certain to be ambitious goals. And we’ll expect committee and task force reports at EVERY board meeting to ensure that they are doing what is needed of them.
No organization can grow and thrive without strong communication. USFA members need information–not only about things like tournament schedules and links to documents but also news about what committees are doing, volunteer and training opportunities and matters that are coming before the Board of Directors. The USFA website is an important portal to the organization; we must enhance it to include more timely and complete information with more user-friendly features so that it is a truly useful resource for our members. We’ll include monthly updates from the president and executive director. We’ll include the names of board members and committee chairs so that members can be in touch with them when they have questions. Board agendas will be posted in advance of the meetings, and minutes will be posted as soon as they have been approved electronically—we won’t wait till after the next meeting to let you know what happened. We also can do more to recognize our athletes’ successes through press releases to local media outlets.
Communication will continue throughout the quad through town meetings. At least one evening session will be held at each NAC and championship tournament with one or more of the officers. We may ask your opinions about specific matters that are of concern to the organization; we definitely will want to hear from you about what is on your minds about how we are doing as officers, and how the USFA is doing as a whole.
Our work between now and 2012 won’t be complete without succession planning. We’ll need to ensure that the work that has begun during our term will continue—this means that we will need to make sure that there are people who know how the organization functions and who are ready to move it forward for the next quad and beyond. We’ll develop a resource database to provide information about members’ expertise that is relevant to our strategic plan.