Why be a Member?

The privilege of membership lies in the Right to Vote.

As matters stand, parents of the Yeshivah and Beth-Rivkah schools are being urged to join the new organisation, however the many parents who may be in arrears with their payments or financial agreements will have no voting rights as part of their membership.  
What will they have that's really of value?
   
I am yet to be convinced that without the privilege of voting membership, there is a purpose to joining any organisation, other than providing your name to fatten the organisation's  membership roll. 

I probably don't have to write very much more, (though of course I will), because from my perspective, the beginning and the end of why one chooses to become a member overwhelmingly sits with Voting Rights.  

One chooses to become a member because one believes in the purpose and ethos of an organisation.   With the right to vote one becomes part of the heart of the organisation.  Even at a grass-roots level, leadership will always be accountable to you.

Not for Profit (NFP) organisations have various structural arrangements.  Despite  variations, one tends to see two core kinds of membership structures:

MODEL ONE - The Board / Committee of Management are the only members of the organisation.   This small core of people might be running an enormous organisation; a school, social club, sports club, religious organisation, cemetery board, cultural institute  or any other organisation that services thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of members of the community.

A  variation might be where as Board members come to the Board they become members, but remain members with diminished authorities when they leave the Board.  Either version will see a smallish core of people  running a community organisation of any size with possibly huge numbers of stakeholders having little if any voice in how the organisational decisions are that may effect them are made.  

You can have the best skilled and most appropriate people sitting on a Board such as this but there are always going to be dilemmas with this model.  This is because, these Boards have no organisational membership to which they are accountable.  The members of these Boards are accountable to neither the thousands of stakeholders, nor the broader community they may serve.  For all their efforts to influence a Board's actions, (and they do have some influence) - they are not part of a membership body, any one of whom may hold a Board to account through the unique power of their individual membership and vote.

Looking to decades past, we've see variations of the model outlined above having been practiced in the Yeshivah leadership space.

MODEL TWO - An organisation where membership is generally open to those who support the purposes,  meet the criteria and are admitted through a process as laid out in the constitution.  Overwhelmingly, the common practice is that unless for some particular (and unusual reason) a member may have been suspended or expelled - e.g. for such actions as bringing the organisation into disrepute - the most significant privilege of membership is the right to vote.  With the right to vote comes all other rights; the right to determine who should participate in the governance/leadership group, to participate in special resolutions which may direct the course of the organisation.   The right to speak at general meetings and the right to receive notice of such meetings and business scheduled.  The right to examine the Registry of Members, General Meeting minutes (and Board minutes if public) and appropriate documents.

All other rights of membership are generally aligned with the right to vote, because this is paramount and the priority.

Looking to the future, one would hope to see this right finally and universally extended in an unfettered fashion, to all members of the Yeshivah Beth-Rivkah parent community who choose to become members of Yeshivah Beth-Rivkah Schools Ltd.  

As matters stand, why be 'subject' to a Board, if the Board need not be accountable to you?   

What is the value of your dignity as a member - if your organisation will not dignify you, will not dignify all it's members, with the most common, the most crucial and the most substantial of membership rights; the right to vote?

...marcia pinskier