Below is a copy of an email sent to the national board and some staff members of the Society of Professional Journalists. Signers of the communication are listed at the end.
This request was made on behalf of an informal group of local chapter boards and leaders. Past issues this year on which this informal group has communicated to the national board include the search for an executive director and transparency surrounding it, and the national organization being overdue on paying local chapters their membership dues.
All SPJ members as well as staff are invited to attend an informal meeting of this group at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, at the SPJ conference in San Antonio.
———————————– Here’s the email: ——————————
Dear national SPJ board and headquarters staff:
Our informal group of local chapter leaders and others request that the national organization fix as soon as possible and in a complete manner the database problems that make it more challenging for local chapters to attract and retain members. As we are all well aware, chapters rely upon annual dues to fund the programming, advocacy, education and other efforts that they conduct throughout the year.
However, for the last several years, it has not always been clear on the SPJ website which chapter one should join and how to do so at the time of paying national dues. Given that the SPJ web portal is the primary way that the 6,000 members of the organization can join their local chapter, it is crucial that this be fixed.
We ask that when someone joins SPJ or renews their membership, the default be that they also join the local chapter in the area of their residence as reflected in their mailing address ZIP Code. By this being the default, we believe that this will make it more likely that national members will also be members of their local chapters. It would still be optional whether someone needs to join, but it would be set to default to join. We also ask that this apply to multi-year memberships. And we ask that in areas with the possibility of being in multiple local chapter areas, the platform provide users the ability to join any and all of those specific chapters.
We greatly appreciate that headquarters staff as well as some members of the national board may also support what we seek. And we likewise appreciate that efforts have been undertaken towards the goals that we share regarding this issue. We understand that when the national organization moves to a new database/CRM/CMS, it is possible that these goals will be able to be achieved.
We ask that any database or other product or service that the organization moves to be guaranteed to provide this functionality. This will help ensure the continued health of local chapters, participation in them, and ultimately, local member voting on local board elections.
Boards of the following professional chapters have approved this request:
Louisiana
Florida
International Community (representing non-U.S. SPJ members)
Detroit
Valley of the Sun Pro Chapter (Arizona)
Minnesota
Rio Grande (New Mexico)
Oklahoma
New England
Chicago Headline Club
Greater Los Angeles
San Antonio
San Diego
Washington, D.C.
and Oregon.
Submitted at 2:51 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 28, 2019.