Originally Posted by
Propworn
No there is only one AGM a year which members vote on items at the meeting. This is the way most operate. During the year you make your input known to your local rep. He may bump it up the line or he may even pole other members in your district/zone and if there is no support he may not push it up the line. Most reps act in step with the majority and stop short of taking on personal agendas. No corporation or association is required to ask permission from the membership to run the organization, rules are in place, a budget is in place, the officers and directors have been voted and approved. Running the business is their job and they do not need to check or supply that info for public consumption. You as a card carrying member can ask for that info but if its felt you may use that info in an attempt to discredit the organization they do not have to disseminate info to you at all.
When you say its to late I ask to late for what your director has voted for or against according to what he feels are the wishes of the majority he represents. If you have a problem with that you have to take it up with your director. You don't get a say in stuff that is day to day operations.
Another fallacy is you keep referring to your dues as our money. Once you pay your dues its no longer YOUR money. Its the cost of membership. If at all you will get one vote that's it majority rules in that case. I belong to two ranges which I pay yearly membership and I get no say in how the range is run. I also belong to a sportsman club and I get one vote at open meetings. I belong to two rc clubs my dues allow me to fly at the fields and gives me one vote at the open meetings. At the proper time and place where I have a vote I may make a motion if I wish to change or amend something. It will need a seconder then a vote by the membership. Pass or fail the majority rules and I can live with that.
I misunderstood the way you characterized how your organization operates.
That said, many organizations in which I'm a member have more robust rules governing the processes by which things are acted upon. AMA has virtually nothing with regard to the level of expenditure that require board approval, let alone membership approval. I guess the difference is whether one believes an organization rest power in the hands of the members or in an oligarchy. AMA clearly believes that power should rest in the hands of the nobility and detached from the unwashed masses. Perhaps that's the reason they're on the financial trajectory they're on. Perhaps it's your very premise, that it's no longer OUR money but THEIR money that's also driving the declining numbers. One can only wonder what it would be like if they put the majority of dues money into clubs where members actually fly than into staff at Taj-Muncie.
I don't know that AMA even has a formal process by which members can formally raise issues, that is in a way that doesn't allow one of the oligarchs to act as a gatekeeper. While it's easy to rationalize this by saying that most of the ideas are crazy, one has to keep in mind that sometimes, just sometimes, that oligarch is wrong. What if that one idea put forward is actually the golden solution ... but the oligarch doesn't understand it or has their own personal reason for not letting it see the light of day. Having a defined process by which one of the elites cannot be the sole gatekeeper on ideas is what protects the organization and ensures that new thinking sees the light of day.
Given many of the criticisms of AMA involve them doing what they've always done and hoping for a different result, it seems like creating a path for new ideas would have merit. But that's probably scary of the nobility ... the oligarchs don't like to share power. Which is why nothing will change for AMA. I'd argue it also explains why FT is growing, and AMA is not (or only barely).