I've been dismayed with the turnout from year to year as well. I've
never been able to put my finger on the root cause of this problem,
although, as I have noted elsewhere, the number of people voting is
about the same number as belong to the Listserve, attend Conference,
and belong to the ARMA Forum. So my expectation is that the number of
members voting is representative of the number of members who are
actively engaged in the Association.

Can we do better? Certainly. I'd like to see a much higher level of
engagement of members in the Association (and all professional
associations in our industry). One of the measures that I'd like to put
in place for the next Executive Director of ARMA International is that
sort of measure -- and hold him or her accountable for increasing that
number. "Engagement" covers a wide variety of measures -- member
satisfaction, member retention, member participation (across a wide
variety of things), and, to some extent, membership growth. I'd also
like to measure things like the likelihood that someone would refer a
colleague to the Association and the likelihood that someone would
remain a member into the future. I would rather have an association
where we find 75% of 10,000 members engaged and participating in the
association than an association of 30,000 members where only 10% are
very active or care. Sure, the 30,000 member association can generate a
lot of revenue, but an awful lot of it is really not doing us much
good, other than increasing the base membership number.

With regard to the election process, I'd encourage those of you with an
interest in improving things to submit your suggestions to the Board
and the Election Management Committee. I think there are some fine
ideas being put into play. Keep in mind that the EMC will soon begin to
solicit candidates for the next election, likely with a deadline in
August, so any changes to the AL and the process really need to happen
quickly. The agenda for the next Board meeting is set, so you need to
work quickly to get your ideas in front of the Board.

I'm not opposed to processes which improve communication and I applaud
folks who have taken the initiative to try to improve the process. The
existing AL is very specific about things like campaigning and has an
intent of making the process as fair as possible. However, a lot of
that was written before online communications were as extensive as they
are today. My primary concern is that if a candidate is asked to speak
on a topic to a segment of the member population, that all candidates
for that office are given equal opportunity. In addition, I'd like to
be certain that what each candidate writes or says is quoted verbatim.

What I think we'd all like to avoid is showing up at Conference and
being beseiged by campaign posters and people in your face about this
candidate or that.

I'm not opposed to members being able to come out in public and state
their preference for a candidate, but I'd like to leave it as that --
their preference for candidate X because candidate X is this -- not
because candidate Y is that. The thing that I hate about elections for
public officials is that most of those campaigns are about how rotten
the opposition is, not how good the candidate is.

And, as always, once I take my place on the ARMA Board, members are
always encouraged to reach out to me directly. I'll quickly note there
that in my last term on the Board, I never had a member (who was not
already engaged in conversation with me about ARMA) contact me directly
about an issue that concerned them.

I'll also post this to the ARMA Forum.

From Glasgow, Scotland, on a chilly but sunny Monday morning,

Patrick Cunningham, CRM
Treasurer-elect, ARMA International
(speaking for himself)

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