Membership Committee Business Meeting

Minutes

March 31, 2001

Art Libraries Society of North America 29^th Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA

Outgoing Chair: Katy Poole

Chair: Leslie Preston

EB liaison: Carole Goldsmith

Recorder: Gladys Markoff-Sotomayor              Revised: Leslie Preston

Present: Leslie Preston, Carole Goldsmith, Gladys Markoff-Sotomayor (the only committee member), Elizabeth Clarke and Vicky Roper from Clarke Management

EB member drop-in's: Ted Goodman, Karen McKenzie

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Preston presented the agenda for the meeting and briefly reviewed the status of committee efforts during the past year.

Past year's accomplishments:

a.             Recruitment and networking--members from Diversity Committee, NARC ; ads in VRA

b.             Revised membership form--pdf file

By-law change: Honorary life membership--to charter members, Distinguished Service Award winners

Membership Database--transition to Clark Mng., clean up of data

Revised membership brochure--Katy created new draft with current information

The presence of Clarke and Roper and only one committee member prompted us to focus on the membership database and the issue of non-renewals.

Membership DB and issue of non-renewals:

Database needs cleanup, using data from 2 years ago.  Errors are being ironed out and the database is in much better shape, only to get better. Clarke needs to know what kind of reports needs to be generated for the membership committee.

Renewal mailings: December, February and after the conference.

At time of conference we had 539 non-renewals, as compared with 100-200 in previous years.  However, renewals are still coming in, and many people renewed at the conference.

Ted Goodman suggests that list of non-renewals be sent to him and phone calls divided among the EB ; later the EB decided to give this to the Regional Reps

Non-renewals:

Last HQ mailing will be the end of April 2001

Clarke will send Preston examples of exit interviews to track why people are not renewing.

Updated list of non-renewals will be sent to regional representatives for phone call follow-up and exit survey by Summer 2001. 

If mailings/phone calls are not successful, names will be removed from the membership DB by September.

Online membership form/renewal form:

a.   HQ is working on the future of online membership forms (form-fill-in)

b.   Clarke is negotiating with a large company who has the capabilities of linking the  

      membership DB with an online form at an affordable rate

Revised membership form--form is better we still need to make a few changes:

create more space for name and address area

reinstate the list of other organizations in which members belong (CAA, ALA, etc.) to track overlap of ARLIS/NA members

chapter affiliation--change wording? Member selects chapter affiliation but are we to assume that the member actually belongs to the selected chapter or do they wish for HQ to notify the selected chapter?

Revised membership brochure:

Language was revised and new HQ address updated

New color or two-tone graphic will be explored. HQ will send sample.

Honorary life membership--By-law change: Charter members and Distinguished Service Award winners.

Draft of letter to those who qualify to announce their honorary membership

Only free membership and free ARLIS publications--conference fees and other fees not waived

Must finalize the list of members based on the 2000-2001 handbook and send letter out

Pending discussion:

Recruiting and Networking: VRA/CAA, schools mailings

Cultural diversity