President’s Column: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes and Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chicago

Dear Friends—

For years, I’ve read the valedictories given by state, divisional, and national presidents as they hand their imaginary gavels off to their successors, and I guess it’s now my turn.  While I’d like to give a nod to “my administration,” I’d like to focus most of this final column of mine on the future.

If there’s one thing that I have learned from my service in ACDA, it is that the people in our industry are the finest folks there are in the world.  If our conference did anything in Sioux Falls in February, I hope that it proved just how wonderful our conference staff is, person for person.  If you enjoyed or were inspired in any way by that event, I hope that you will thank one of the staff members.  It is shocking to think how many people were involved in some form of service during those four days, and I will be forever grateful to each one of them for their commitment and artistry.  I consider South Dakota a second home now because the people there are just first-rate!

I am also thrilled that Rhonda Fuelberth has pledged to serve our division as president following that tremendous force of nature, Mary Kay Geston.  It does my heart good to know how much better off our division will be in the next four years than it has been in the last two!  I beg you to volunteer your services to Mary Kay and Rhonda moving forward.  They are both fantastic leaders and will appreciate your help!  Also, I want to commend David Puderbaugh for throwing his hat into the ring—our division truly was able to choose from among two fabulous candidates as opposed to so many elections in our country where we have to elect a “lesser of two evils!”

As many of you are starting to become aware of, the divisional board, in cooperation with the Central Division (CACDA) and the national office, has agreed to mount a joint divisional conference in Chicago in 2018.  Several of you have been in touch with me personally to share your enthusiasm for or concerns about this decision, and I appreciate your candor and integrity.  I want to spend the remainder of this last column of mine describing some of the timeline and details behind this decision.

As I write this, we do not have the final financials on the Sioux Falls conference (nor on any of the other divisional conferences).  So our frame of reference needs to be (and has been) the 2014 conferences.  According to figures from the national office, five of the seven divisional conferences in 2014 lost money.  In some divisions, this was planned—some of our sister divisions have well over $75,000 in reserves.  But CACDA and NC-ACDA have been in dire financial straits.  At one point in October of 2015, our own division was literally in arrears for about two weeks.

These two conferences share several demographics that separate them from the other five:

• CACDA and NC-ACDA were originally one conference and split.
• The vast majority of the states that comprise the two divisions are “affiliate” states, meaning that they handle their own finances independently from the national office.  In the U.S., only seven are affiliate states; five of these are in either CACDA or NC-ACDA.
• CACDA and NC-ACDA active memberships are roughly half the number of each of the other divisions in the country.
• In 2014, CACDA and NC-ACDA conferences both drew roughly 400 attendees.  Every other divisional conference drew twice as many attendees.
• In June 2015, CACDA and NC-ACDA each had roughly $20,000 in their bank accounts.  No other division had less than three times that figure.

In short, at least in part because the original ten-state division split into two parts, we have been trying to create and support a conference on half the resources of most conferences.

Think about NC-ACDA.  According to the 2014 census, our largest community is Minneapolis/St.Paul, with roughly 700,000 citizens and ranked #18 in the U.S.  And that’s because we are combining two cities in that case. Then comes Milwaukee (#31 at 600,000) and Omaha (#41 at 445,000).  Lincoln (#72) and Madison (#83) are the only other cities within the top 100 in population in the U.S.  We have 6 out of 100, counting the Twin Cities separately.

It would be silly to compare us with the SW, Western, or Eastern divisions.  Texas alone has twelve cities in the top 100!  Western has California and Arizona.  Eastern has New York City!  For comparison, look at Southern.  They have Jacksonville (#12), Charlotte (#17), Memphis (#23), Nashville (#25), Louisville (#30), Atlanta (#39—surprised that this is so low, but it must not count all the suburbs!), Virginia Beach (#40), Raleigh (#43), Miami (#44), and New Orleans (#50), just in the top 50!  Even CACDA has many more large cities that we do—Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, and Fort Wayne all make the top 100, and Chicago’s population alone is larger than our top five combined.

On the national end of things, there is ongoing conversation about realignment and reorganization.  The recently adopted changes to the governance structure are a beginning, but my sense (and this is just my sense) is that the national office would like to reconsider how the overall organization is structured.  There are surveys being taken of leaders within the industry, and I expect that the national office and board will soon be moving forward with more changes.  What these changes will be, I cannot anticipate.

I have come to believe that the upcoming Chicago conference will serve as something of a “beta test” for the entire national organization.  As we all know, it is becoming more and more of a challenge for people to get away from their jobs to attend conferences, whether state, divisional, or national events.  And at the same time, the cost of launching a conference only increases.

I made the original motion on the divisional board to hold the 2008 conference in Fargo and establish a rotation among our six states.  I have valued that regionalism and have attended a state and regional conference in every one of our six states.  But having just hosted the Sioux Falls conference, I can tell you that there are certain realities that affect such an event.  Exhibitors were hesitant to come—we were harder to reach by plane.  With the CACDA event in Chicago, we lost NC-ACDA members to a neighboring regional.  While Sioux Falls was literally the geographic center of the division, and while I do not have final numbers, I believe that we will have hosted the smallest attendance since Fargo.

The reality is that a conference in Chicago in 2018 will allow the following:

• easy travel in and out of a major hub city;
• a more attractive venue for world-class musicians—and I say that with NO offense to Sioux Falls—but it is a reality; and
• the ability to distribute the costs of ONE conference among TWO divisions. I would be shocked if we couldn’t run a conference in 2018 that wouldn’t make a great deal more money than either Sioux Falls or Chicago produced separately this year.

Finally, I want to underscore that this one event does not spell the death knell for the sovereignty of our division.  There has been NO discussion beyond wild speculation to suggest that our conferences will coalesce back into one body.  But as I wrote in an earlier presidential column, we need to reassess what the objectives and purposes of a division are and then fulfill them.  Right now, our division produces a wonderful series of outreach options through Melisma and social media.  And we produce a conference.  We will need to discuss whether that’s enough of a raison d’etre to maintain a governance structure from the 1960s that was modeled on MENC protocols.

Friends, I would encourage all of us to embrace the concept of change in 2018.  Chicago should work well.  Perhaps a 2020 conference will again be a joint conference or perhaps not.  But trying something new should be exciting and energizing!  If you have ideas or concerns, please address them to me or to the national office—let’s converse!  I guarantee you that your leadership seeks to serve you in the most practical and useful manner possible.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you who have been so supportive of NC-ACDA and me for the past several years.  In particular, I want to thank Mary Kay, Aimee, Brian and Laura, Judy, David, Amy, Phil, the state presidents who have served during my tenure, and all who have provided counsel and support behind the scenes.  It has been my honor to serve you and I look forward to my imminent “retirement.”  Blessings to you all!