Posted on HASnotes in May 2016 I recently heard someone say we need to develop a plan for disposing of our sanctuaries because if we cannot get someone to be president next year we will be forced to shut down Hartford Audubon. That comment has led me to think about what can be done to make HAS a stronger organization by increasing the pool of people willing to serve as vice president. This is important because traditionally the vice president moves up to president after two years. There are two broad areas we can address: ·        Reduce the vice president’s work load, ·        Increase the number of active participating members. When I was asked to be vice president in February 2007, the first thing I asked is what would I have to do. Since the only thing I knew about the vice president was that they introduced speakers at the meetings, I was bit shocked to hear that I would also have to obtain the speakers, make the r...

Posted on HASnotes in January 2016 One of the consequences of going on overnight trips is they give people time to try to talk you into something. I had resolved to not be any part of the bylaws revision, but Sarah Faulkner, on the Long Island trip, and Fran D'Amico, on the Cape Ann trip, tried really hard to get me to read and comment on the latest bylaws revision. Against my better judgment I made the attachment. I started with version Sarah sent out two days ago. I then marked up things in red, green and orange. The red are parts I want to delete. The green are parts I want to add or are a comment. The orange are things I want to take out or really revise. The problem with the current bylaws is that they are too hard to read and therefore do not get read. The problem has carried over to the current revision. Sarah has recently replaced a good bit of the legalize with language most of us like much more. This was good start. However, there is much more to do. The by...

Posted on HASnotes in May 2015 Written to the Board  in May 2013 I propose that we split our current May meeting into two parts: an Awards Banquet in April and an Annual Meeting in May. The Awards Meeting would be everything we have have been doing in May except for the financial reporting and elections required by the bylaws to be in a May Annual Meeting. It would also have the Nominating Committee report required for April by the bylaws. In addition to the financial reporting and elections the Annual Meeting would have a free hour or so for the Officers, other Board Members and Members to work together to improve Hartford Audubon. My goal is for this session to go far beyond a general discussion of complaints and suggestions. Ideas can and should be developed and staffing requirements planned. My great hope is that people who come to feel strongly about the need for some activity will feel compelled to be part of the solution. Every topic does not need to be disc...

Posted on HASnotes in May 2013 There were a number of questions asked at the Banquet that deserve deeper answers than were given in the time available: 1.        Is our membership going up or down? 2.        How many properties do we own? 3.        What is our strategy to determine spending levels? 4.        What is our strategy to determine the securities we invest in? 5.        Is our endowment too big? I will try to answer these questions without driving everyone batty. All of my answers are based on documents contained on the HASmember web site. Most have also been distributed on HASnotes at one time or the other. My answers use information current as of today. 1.        HASmember has membership counts from all of the programs books in the archives. Years with missing data do not have me...

From the July 2011 issue of The Crest Forty years ago Betty Kleiner sent in the application for Hartford Audubon to become a nonprofit. My first thought when seeing the application four years ago was that this must be an extremely boring, legal type document. How wrong I was! This is the most remarkable Hartford Audubon document I have ever read.   The IRS wanted to know why we became an organization and how we were going to behave as a nonprofit. The application is a series of questions to get these answers. Our answer was that we are birding club that has meetings, trips, lectures and sanctuaries. What is amazing is that if we were to submit an application to be a nonprofit today, it would be nearly identical to what Betty wrote. And she could have written the same thing in 1950 after we acquired our first sanctuary. The essence of Hartford Audubon has changed very little in sixty years. One thing is certain – the world has not been unchanging for 60 years. We are a bi...

Posted on HASnotes in March 2011 After struggling with solving the Niederwerfer house problem for two years I have concluded that the way someone implements ethical standards into their decision making process is far and away the most significant influence on the decision they will make. The ethical concern with the disposition of the house centers on the promise we made to the Niederwerfers. More specifically, it is about the importance we attach to keeping our word. The difficulty is that “importance” has a range of possible values. It is not a simple on or off proposition. The good part, though, is that endpoints of the range are easy to identify. Here are the endpoints:  We will not make any decision that we know to be unethical, and  We will only make decisions we know to be ethical. The first endpoint is flexible and relaxed. It grants the freedom to choose from the largest number of options. There is no need to prove what you want to do is ethical. All...