[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Delphine Ménard]

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the two are intertwined though. Distance and autonomy are
>  interconnected. For instance, California itself may not be ripe for a
>  state-wide chapter: it may merit a NoCal and SoCal chapter (north and
>  south). Whereas, Pennsylvania really has two major population centers
>  connected by a highway,  it's not so hard to get between Philly and
>  Pittsburg. Same thing with DC....it's trivial to get between Baltimore
>  and DC, but it's an all day trek to get to Boston, and at least a half
>  day to New York. For those purposes, regional chapters don't
>  necessarily work quite as well as Metro area chapters.
>
>  Take Florida for instance. The capital is in north florida, but it's
>  over 6 hours away by car from the major south florida metro area
>  (miami, ft. lauderdale, palm beach). and slightly less than that from
>  Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater, and 4 from Orlando. So it makes sense to
>  have a chapter for Florida located somewhere in the south of the state
>  (probably Tampa or Orlando). But the distances tie directly into the
>  issue of autonomy, i.e. is the chapter state based, or metro area based?
>
>  On the other hand, some areas work quite well for regional chapters:
>  the New England area being a prime example of this. Similarly, South
>  Carolina and Pennsylvania work well as a state chapter.  DC is so
>  closely tied to Maryland and northern virginia that it would work best
>  as a metro area chapter.
>
>  The point is, I don't think a mandatory structure works well for the
>  US. Some areas are better suited to state, others metro area, others
>  still regional. But no single structure works for everything, so it's
>  better to "mix and match" as necessary to best serve the constituency
>  of each chapter.

I could not agree more with your last sentence. The problem I see with
"mix and match", which for the record, is definitely the approach I
believe the situation in the US calls for, is that if we let all the
"metro-areas", "states", "regional sections" create chatpers as they
see fit, with no way to tie them together somehow, then we're facing
the problem that at some point some might overlap. One exmaple might
be: if you have a metro area Philadelphia chapter, where do people who
live elsewhere than in that metro area, in Pennsylvania and still want
to do stuff on a local level, fit? In which structure? Do we dissolve
the metro-area chapter to get a state-level chapter? If they
incorporate, who gets to fundraise? The Foundation, which has been
seeking tax-deductibility US-wide? The metro area chapter? The state
chapter? All of them? I mean... this could get really messy.

I think that Pharos' approach, ahving the WMFoundation dedicate
specific resources to a "US local chapter" (which by the way, does not
have to operate US wide, but could just be the point of communication
of more regional chapters) actually makes sense, and it is definitely
one approach I am going to take into consideration, among others.

This staid, I still believe we should be looking at other
organisations before we reinvent the wheel. We're definitely not the
only ones who had to ask ourselves that question.


Delphine

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