[FUN_Mail] SFN meeting and strategic planning

[Ronald J Bayline]

Hello fellow FUN members!  Greetings from San Diego and the SFN meeting.  Some of you heard this report this morning (bright and early) at the FUN business meeting, but I wanted to make sure I reached out to our membership.  I'd like to reach out to you to ask your assistance with strategic planning for the organization.  At this time I want to update you on the process, and to ask for assistance with the strategic planning process.  I stated my reasons for doing this in a recent FUN newsletter, and I'm attaching my report here for your information. I'm also including a link to a website on "strategic planning for nonprofits" that may be of assistance just to help us set up the framework.

https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/strategic-planning-nonprofits

There are a few areas of strategic planning that seem to be very important for us to consider.  Some are less glamorous than others.  I can put these into a few categories, in no particular order:


1)      Administrative:  Do we have the right administrative structure for the organization?  As many of us know, we are a real "grassroots" organization in that it is all of us as members who do all the work. There are great benefits to this, but also challenges. One thing is institutional memory and record keeping.  Another is compliance with formal rules and regulations.

2)      Financial:  FUN operates a more significant budget now than in the years when I was treasurer. We have several endowed programs.  We need to consider the best strategies to manage and oversee these funds, and discuss ideas to increase fundraising if that is important to our mission.

3)      Values:  We are all clear on our values-after all, it's in our name.  We are an organization that supports undergraduate neuroscience education and research.  But do we need some more explicit statements of those values in the guise of mission and/or vision statements?

4)      Programs:  Our programmatic activities have continually increased over the years.  How do we structure and support these initiatives? Are there other areas that we should be considering?

5)      Membership:  One topic that has come up repeatedly is the categories of membership, and the various benefits and expectations of those categories.  Should we be defining these areas differently than we currently do?

6)      Communication and marketing:  How do we best convey our message to our membership?  How do we interact with the rest of the neuroscience community?  How can we leverage our web presence and social media to promote undergraduate neuroscience and education?

This is by no means a final, or conclusive, list.  We will be working together to determine the specific areas of focus for the planning process over the next several months.  The process will involve a series of steps:


1)      We will engage in a data-gathering process collecting a variety of information from our organization and membership.  We already have some information from our member survey that many of you completed last year.

2)      Following the data gathering period, we will develop working groups focused on specific areas such as those listed above. Each working group will perform a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) surrounding their topic.

3)      Each working group will submit a report to a central strategic planning committee who will then develop specific plans for the organization. These plans will then be shared with the membership for comment and feedback.  The goal is to complete this work by the next SFN  meeting so that we can present the plan to the membership for a vote to implement those plans.
.
This effort will require the assistance of a wide swath of our membership.  If you are willing to help please contact me.

I will also be hosting strategic planning sessions at the FUN booth during the SFN meeting.  For those who are here in San Diego, please stop by.  I will hold the strategic planning sessions at the FUN booth (#4300) on Monday, from 10-11 AM and 4-5 PM, and on Tuesday from 1-2 PM.

Thanks for your support of FUN, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Ron Bayline


*****************************************
Ronald J. Bayline
Professor and Chair, Biology Department
Highmark Professor in the Life Sciences
Washington and Jefferson College
60 South Lincoln Street
Washington, PA 15301
ph: (724) 250-3406
fx:  (724) 228-3802
email:  rjbayline at washjeff.edu<mailto:rjbayline at washjeff.edu>
*****************************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.funfaculty.org/pipermail/fun_mail/attachments/20181104/f4db2945/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: FUN newsletter-Bayline editorial.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 14374 bytes
Desc: FUN newsletter-Bayline editorial.docx
URL: <https://lists.funfaculty.org/pipermail/fun_mail/attachments/20181104/f4db2945/attachment-0001.docx>