SPJ's board has two at-large directors. The only defined duty is a daunting one: Review every annual report filed by every SPJ pro chapter. This year, Bill McCloskey and I read 33 of them and listed "areas of achievement," "areas of concern," and "specific actions required."Some of those reports were downright depressing. Here's what I wrote for one of them...
Not much to say when the president declares, “There is very little membership left to retain” and “no interest from members in programming.” Maybe that’s because the officers decided in 2008 to take a “year off from SPJ.” The president appears to be the chapter, speaking to high school classes himself. If he contracts swine flu, this chapter will perish before he does.
This wasn't uncommon. Of another troubled chapter, I wrote, "The president apparently does everything, but he’s leaving the profession. Is there anyone else in this chapter to pick up the slack?"
In all, I counted six chapters that suffer from what I call Solo SPJer Syndrome. They're often led by presidents who are totally committed to the cause, but they have no equally enthused members.
For some reason, this saddens me more than the handful of chapters that just barely exist and don't care to do more. (And it is just a handful — for every weak chapter, there's a kick-ass one, which I'll talk about tomorrow.)
Since these presidents have zero local help, we need to figure out a way to lend them national aid.
I have an idea. But if the board would tackle this, or assign some folks to do so, I bet they'd come up with even better ones.
Here's what I got...
The SPJ board appoints one of its members as a "program mentor," who gets a budget of $1,000. The mentor will offer presidents help in setting up one big buzz-generating program that will hopefully draw in some motivated new members. The mentor will match any money the chapter puts up, and will find someone to help talk them through the logistics.
Sound silly? Well, weirdly enough, every one of those president-only chapters has money in the bank. Sometimes, it's only $500, but it goes all the way up to a whopping $9,000.
So imagine this scenario: Chapter President Han Solo is tired of hosting panel discussions all by himself, and drawing a dozen cornea-glazed attendees. So he contacts the mentor, who offers him a menu of event options. Because I just wrote about it, suppose President Solo settles on Project Invictus. It's going to cost $400 (which is what I paid for our version). The prez puts up $200, and the mentor matches it.
The mentor emails me, because I've done one, and asks me to email President Solo and give him time-saving tips on pulling it together. I even put the president in touch with Dan Grech from the Dart Society, who co-sponsored our event, and maybe Dart gets involved.
Lame idea? Come up with a better one. Please.
