"As someone has stated recently, why all the guess-work?
Why doesn't JFNA simply poll all the member federations, asking them for the 5 (or pay a consultant to determine the correct number....just kidding) Top Priorities that will drive their local federation's mission statements for the next 10-15 years (mission statements do change from time to time, particularly when Strategic Plans are adopted)?
And, most importantly, make the results public so everyone can see the results.
Then JFNA can use those results as a guide for their relevance to their stakeholders.
Everyone will see what the system wants/needs.....no guesswork, finger-pointing, etc.
Then based on the results, JFNA will be forced to 1) Keep the status quo, 2) Restructure (at either a lower or maybe even higher annual budget), 3) Shut the doors."
These are, of course, excellent and seemingly simple suggestions. But they presume that JFNA leaders have any interest whatsoever in asking the federations for these kinds of input. What we have seen the past 9 years is a JFNA wholly in the thrall of itself; it has been and continues to be about itself and only about itself -- not about the federations, not about the donors. And, in being about itself, JFNA believes in is own relevance...to itself...even though it isn't even that.
When the merger went forward, this excellent suggestion of federation prioritization was exactly what many of us believed would happen, what the federations would demand and to which JFNA would be responsive. But, no. Instead, distracted by shiny objects -- personal vendettas, the so-called "Global Planning Table," TribeFests, "Strategic Initiatives" and others -- JFNA , its leaders without a clue as to what federations wanted or needed -- turned inward and became more and more about itself and nothing else.
The JFNA Budget which could tell federations about JFNA's priorities is but a farcical fiction -- 50% for FRD!!?? Does anyone -- even those inside JFNA, even the CFO, really believe that? Expand Consulting Services? Where is the staffing that would be respected by the communities who are themselves hiring expert consultants, most of whom worked at one time for either JFNA or the federations?
I endorse the Commentator's ideas as set forth above. Do you think anyone...anyone...at JFNA would even understand them?
Rwexler
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3 comments:
Richard:
You applaud when someone suggests:
"Why doesn't JFNA simply poll all the member federations, asking them for the 5 Top Priorities that will drive their local federation's mission statements for the next 10-15 years...
...Then JFNA can use those results as a guide for their relevance to their stakeholders...
Everyone will see what the system wants/needs"
Here's the thing--the idea is hardly new. In fact, this was precisely the model followed for the Alliance, to determine from its member Federations which national agency issues needed to be prioritized and which agencies came closet to following these guidelines.
But you roundly critiqued it, perhaps because you are/were too intimately involved with some of the agency players most at risk.
So I am hoisted on my own petard? Not so fast.
I the Alliance leadership was doing as suggested in the "Questions" in today's Blog would we have an Alliance which, since the "new Model" described was implemented, would we have less allocable dollars and fewer Alliance members as we do today than prior to the new "Model"? I don't think so.
What the Alliance did and continues fails to engage the broader federation world or its agencies in its priority-setting and then claim as this Anonymous writer does that somehow and some way that "all the (JFNA) member federations" bought into its ultimately misleading and uninviting so-called "priorities."
Oh, as I wrote when I first commented on the woeful Alliance, I am a proud past Chair of what is now the NCSEJ; yes, back in 1991-1993. And, you, my Anonymous friend, what is lurking in your background?
So, Richard, someone writes you from inside the Alliance. He/she is clearly blinded by their own b.s. That's really too bad, but this blindness is the story of jana in microcosm; just as the failure of the Alliance is the failure of JFNA in microcosm.
(There is also the continuing story of blaming someone, often you, for your criticism as if that criticism was somehow the very reason for failure.)
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