January Message to Branch Presidents

Dear AAUW NC Presidents:

There are just a couple of things which I thought were important to bring to your attention.

(1) The AAUW NC Treasurer is Denny McGuire. Denny has now recuperated from her illness. Thanks to Mary Fran Schickedantz who continued as treasurer while Denny was on the mend. Please be sure that dues and any other financial transactions are sent to Denny, using the following address.

(2) I hope you are all aware of the decision last fall wherein the AAUW NC board voted to waive half-year state dues for national members who transfer in to a branch in January or February. Some branches may also choose to waive the half-year dues in this case.

Branch members’ memberships all expire on June 30, but those who join AAUW through the national organization have expiration dates at the end of the month a year after they join. When they transfer to a branch, their expiration date is changed to June 30 – so they may gain or lose months of membership.

A national member transferring to a branch in January or February of the year their membership expires, will be invoiced (like all branch members) for the next fiscal year later in the spring. If, however, their membership expires in the next fiscal year, it is appropriate that they pay a full year’s state and national dues to join the branch since the branch membership will expire more than a year in the future.

This change, then, means that the branch does not have to collect an extra half-year dues to “cover” the end of this fiscal year for a member who is joining for the next fiscal year. A side effect is that if they are joining for just a few months until the end of this fiscal year, they owe no state dues. Similarly, life members can join the branch for the current fiscal year without paying national (of course) or state dues.

(3) The number of MALs (Members At Large) in 64 NC counties is now posted on our web site (www.aauwnc.org). If you want to identify the actual names of these MALs in your area you, as branch president, have access to those in the AAUW Member Services Database. For assistance, please contact Nancy Shoemaker or connect@aauw.org. The MALs in your area are potential branch members and can enjoy the reduced dues benefit noted in (2) above.

(4) Please begin to encourage your branch members to attend our Annual Meeting in Burlington on March 30-31, 2012. We hope to have registration materials available by the end of this month.

(5) The Public Policy Pilot Program is up and running. If your branch is participating and monitoring specific issues, please remind the “senders” in your branch to begin regularly monitoring their emails for any incoming email from “pp-info@aauwnc.org” and encourage other members to subscribe to pp-alerts@aauwnc.org. Also note the importance of keeping a record of your senders’ communications to the receivers in PPPP.

I hope all goes well with your branch activities. Contact myself or Lill if you have any questions or concerns as we move toward our Annual Meeting in March.

Karla Atkinson