At our meeting on June 8, members heard from Ayo Atterberry, Chief of Culture at LWVUS. We had invited Ayo to take us through the transformation journey that is behind the changes we will be experiencing at the local level.
The journey began with the idea that “Building League power at every level is necessary to fulfill our mission over the next century,” as former LWVUS President Dr. Deborah Turner put it. The first step was an organizational assessment in 2016, followed by creating a transformation roadmap in 2018, so these changes have been under development for a long time.
The goal is to build capacity and become more inclusive. To fulfill both of these aims, the League will implement a consistent and aligned membership system across all levels of the League to eliminate barriers to participation, simplifying the mechanics of joining. Further reducing barriers by changing the dues to “pay what you can” should help Leagues to grow and achieve a more diverse membership.
The 2016 assessment saw that vital work was happening at the state and local levels that could benefit from increased support, but too much time and talent are spent on duplicative administrative work. As part of the new structure, the League is creating an equitable division of dues between levels of the League.
The current stage of our transformation is Framing the Future, in which a new, centralized member management system and a revised distribution of dues will be implemented on Feb. 1, 2025, that will immediately benefit the state Leagues.
One word of explanation: the League selected a software package called ChapterSpot to manage membership at the national level. Funds will be distributed to local Leagues, and those of us using our current member management system and website platform expect that member data will automatically be passed to our database so we can make use of it as we do now to communicate with our members.
Ayo’s presentation covered a lot of ground. A recording of her talk can be found on our membership page here:
https://lwvbellinghamwhatcom.org/join.
You must login to the website to view the video.
We’ll continue to provide information about these changes and how they affect our local League in future Voter articles.