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President's Letter:
Paul Elvig , ICCFA president for 2007-2008
Mark Krause, ICCFA President-Elect
Planning for the ICCFA's future
At the beginning of our terms as ICCFA president and president-elect, we started looking at the organization with an eye to the future. From time to time, every good organization or business needs to look at structure, agendas and systems. Operating models that once were new and progressive often eventually become a bad fit.
The ICCFA has evolved from a cemetery association to one encompassing all aspects of the funeral, cremation, cemetery and memorialization business, greatly increasing its membership and membership benefits. To keep growing and improving our meetings, products, benefits and other services that help our members run their businesses, we need to make sure our leadership is structured to make the best use of the volunteers who are the backbone of the association.
After discussions at the 2007 convention, we decided to see if the ICCFA was operating in a way that best fits our collective goals and is responsive to our present and future initiatives. In plain talk: "Let's see what's working and what we can make better and let's change or discard what doesn't fit."
This has been quite an ambitious project, with countless hours spent analyzing many aspects of the association. After many preliminary conversations and e-mails, the Future Directions Committee was established and met at ICCFA headquarters last August. One of the amazing results of the idea exchanges prior to the meeting was how many of the committee members had the same ideas about how the organization could be "tweaked" to reflect our contemporary attitudes and responsibilities. The meeting was refreshing and exciting; it involved a bunch of hard work by our dedicated staff and committee members. Listed below are the recommendations developed, presented to and unanimously approved by the Board of Directors at its fall meeting.
Recommendations
1. Align titles of the vice presidents to fit current functions and re-assign several portfolio areas.
2. Assign each board member to a specific vice president for assignment to specific portfolio areas.
3. Provide written brief job descriptions for each vice president. Specifics to include holding organizational meeting caucuses with assigned directors.
4. Provide written brief job descriptions for the Board of Directors' position. Specifics to include recruiting one new member and/or one renewal save each year.
5. Assign specific duties to the president-elect that involve hands-on responsibilities.
6. Hold a Fall Management Conference in Washington, D.C., near association headquarters, on the next open date. (We have already acted on this recommendation and have scheduled a conference for October 7-10, 2009, at the Renaissance Washington.
7. Have the president and president-elect convene an annual management meeting at association headquarters.
8. Eliminate several inactive programs and committees.
9. Make more use of task forces rather than establishing new committees.
Many of these points could occupy the content of whole articles with the thought, reasoning and the anticipated results of these recommendations.
The purpose of this letter is to introduce all of our members to our initiatives and directions. Subsequent letters will address some of the major recommendations in greater detail.
All of us-the ICCFA's leadership and the entire membership-want to have a strong and vibrant association that will lead us well into the next decades.
Paul Elvig
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