Looking Toward the Hartford Audubon Future: Ideas to Consider, Revise and Expand

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 rental arrangements for all of the places we meet, and be in charge of the program book process. And to beat all, the speakers and rental arrangements had to be ready for the program book by June 15. It took a while for me to agree to this, and I think this list has scared away many potential vice presidents.

Here is a list of specific ideas to be discussed below that would contribute to the goal of reducing the vice president’s work load:

1.       Form a team to obtain speakers for meetings,

2.       Combine the Wildlife Series and the Monthly Meetings and reduce the number of meetings,

3.       Form a meeting facilities team.

Here is a list of specific ideas to be discussed below that have the potential to increase the number of active participating members:

4.       Form a membership outreach team,

5.       Form a “Buddies” team for the Beginner’s walks,

6.       Start and be active in new activities that are fun for existing members.

DISCUSSION OF SPECIFIC IDEAS

1. Form a team to obtain speakers for meetings

This is simple to visualize, difficult to staff, and important. It has the potential to solve most of our vice president problem all by itself. The concept is that three or four people would begin by building a repository of speakers and subjects, and hopefully comments. The list could start with the program books listing of speakers and subjects. We could then ask members who else to add. The team would carry over from year so that it could become more adept with time. I expect they would get to the point where they enter a new season with a starting list for speakers. This is quite different from a new vice president who has to start from scratch.

2. Combine the Wildlife Series and the Monthly Meetings and reduce the number of meetings

One of the simplest and surest ways to reduce the vice president’s work load is to reduce the number of meetings that need speakers. We now have four Wildlife Series meetings and ten Monthly Meetings a year. This results in October, November, February and March having two meetings. Suppose we go to one meeting a month from September through June. My favorite way to do this, at least right now, is to convert the Wildlife Series meetings into regular Monthly Meetings. They would be led by the president and have the usual monthly meeting agenda. The speakers at the Wildlife Series would continue to be viewed as more special and expensive than the other speakers. They would continue to meet in the same months but on the second Tuesday. They would continue to meet at the McAuley and the October, November, February and March meetings at St. James’s would be discontinued. The Wildlife Series would be free. The monthly schedule would look like this:

September         St. James’s         speaker

October              McAuley             Wildlife Series speaker

November          McAuley             Wildlife Series speaker

December          St. James’s         Pot Luck Supper

January               St. James’s         speaker

February             McAuley             Wildlife Series speaker

March                 McAuley             Wildlife Series speaker

April                   The Wood          speaker

May                    St. James            Annual Meeting – possible Pot Luck Dinner

June                    NW Park             birding and picnic

I like this schedule a lot, although I wish we could add a July meeting that focuses on shorebirds for beginners. The August shorebird migration is rarely mentioned at Hartford Audubon meetings.

This schedule reduces the number of speakers the vice president must recruit in a year from today’s seven to three.

The program selection team in the first item was talking only about the seven regular monthly meeting speakers we have today. We could continue to have the Wildlife Series have its own team (Fran) to select and recruit wildlife speakers, but at some point it might be nice to have one program selection team that schedules all seven speakers we will have in a year.

3. Form a meeting facilities team

We have three tasks that we need to perform: provide refreshments at Monthly Meetings; manage the pot luck supper; and make rentals arrangements for meeting places. These tasks are currently falling to the person of last resort – our president. This is not the way it should be. We need a team. Since this team would be permanent, it would develop the expertise to do the rental arrangements and not be faced with a whole string of unknown tasks as a new vice president would be.

4. Form a membership outreach team

We need new members, no doubt about it. We have membership brochures. We need someone to make sure they are available on trips and at sanctuaries. We need things I have never heard of. We need a creative membership outreach team.

5. Form a “Buddies” team for the Beginner’s walks

Perhaps our biggest draw for newly interested birders, both member and non-member, is our Beginner’s Walks. It would be great if could use those walks to teach those newbies about the many aspects of Hartford Audubon and to shorten the time it takes for them to become active, participating members. Everyone would gain if they could form a relationship with a few of our members so that when they came to a meeting they would find a friend.

 I am thinking that we need three or four people to go on a string of Beginner’s and Great Pond walks. If a newbie goes on a second trip and gets together with a friend from the last trip, good things will happen for the newbie and for Hartford Audubon. These trips are led by truly wonderful leaders, but when two leaders have a trip with 30 or 40 people, they are busy. The purpose of the “buddies” team is to extract even more from one of our greatest success stories without making the trip leaders do more. The only thing a “buddy” need do is go on a series of walks, make friends, bird, and talk up Hartford Audubon.

6. Start and be active in new activities that are fun for existing members

Throughout America clubs of all types are in decline. Memberships are getting older and new members are getting harder to find. It is a lifestyle thing and the Internet is no small part, especially for bird clubs. People used to join bird clubs to learn about birding and go birding. Now the Internet provides most of the answers, especially about the location of rare birds. I firmly believe what Hartford Audubon offers, and the Internet cannot, is “having fun doing things with people, in person”.

We need a lot of creative help on this part.  Do your bit. Here is one idea.

Many people get a special joy from Hartford Audubon trips when they see people they have seen on an earlier trip. That is hard to do with the rather large trip schedule of HAS and this idea is an attempt to make this particular experience more available

I would like to be part of an informal group that gets together after the program book comes out and chooses specific trips that everybody in the group would like to attend. After that, we just go on the trips in normal way. There is nothing elitist about this. Standard bird trip behavior is the norm. It is simply a way to cope with the fact that Hartford Audubon has more trips than any sane person would want to attend.

CONCLUSION

If what I say in this paper seems important to you, please do not sit on your thoughts. Be vocal. Make your thoughts, suggestions and revisions known. Send a note out on HASnotes. Make a point at the Annual Meeting in May. And above all, find a way for you to make a contribution to Hartford Audubon.

Although the general topic of this paper may seem to be pessimistic, I am not. My response to the statement in the opening sentence is “NO WAY!”

Fred Nowak

May 2, 2016