Women face financial, membership, legal woes head onOfficers of the National Council of Catholic Women reported the findings of a thorough assessment of the organization’s standing to members assembled at their recent national convention. Posted: 10.07.09 JACKSONVILLE | Members of the National Council of Catholic Women heard bleak news from their top officers at their recent convention here: The organization is rapidly shrinking, going broke and was operating with a policy–setting structure that was not only unwieldy, but also illegal. But the 900 or so gathered women also heard a message of hope from their president, regional vice presidents, treasurer and other leaders: We’re already working on it and, with your help, we can fix it. “We all know that times have changed, our beloved Church has changed, society has changed. It’s time for (the National Council of Catholic Women) to change,” said Bobbie Hunt, president of organization that comprises members of women’s groups at nearly 4,000 parishes and other Catholic entities, including 212 in Florida. In addition to the members of those local groups, the national council has about 4,000 individual members. During the Sept. 24 session on “The Future of NCCW,” Hunt and other officers reported the findings of a thorough assessment of the organization’s standing. “A new management model is needed and the board is exploring a number of options,” said Patty Johnson, a regional vice president who reported on management and operations issues revealed in the assessment. FOLLOW THE MONEYTreasurer Debby Van Mele reported that the organization’s declining number of local affiliates — and therefore members — has led to a downward financial spiral over the last three decades. In 1986, 38 percent of U.S. Catholic parishes had a National Council of Catholic Women affiliate. That was down to 20 percent by 2008, Van Mele said. Lost membership translates into lost income, she said, and not just from lost membership dues. In addition to the $1.2 million in dues lost since 1986, the membership decline has meant loss of convention revenue and a steep drop in annual giving. The biannual convention used to be the organization’s second–largest revenue stream behind membership dues, she said. This year’s convention broke even. The organization has remained solvent only because of a $500,000 bequest in 1997 that was supposed to be used as an endowment, but instead has been used to cover operating costs, Van Mele said. About $125,000 remains, she said. “This treasurer believes we will cease to exist in 24 months,” Van Mele said, adding that the course can and must be changed. “NCCW cannot continue to operate financially without significant changes.” Van Mele and the other officers at the Sept. 24 session pitched a package of bylaws revisions they said would help address the organization’s problems, including one intended to boost membership. After a debate the following day that stretched late into the evening, members approved the overall package with an 84 percent vote — but not before amending a few of the more controversial proposals. WHO’S A MEMBER?On the membership front, the convention delegates approved a plan to change the structure of the national organization to more strongly emphasize individual memberships. Van Mele said the change should be accompanied by an aggressive membership marketing campaign. Donna Sanders, a regional vice president who reported on membership issues, said the national organization’s dual structure — through which it recruits individual members but mostly functions as a federation of local affiliates whose members are automatically members of the national entity — is no longer working. “This structure has been very confusing to our members,” Sanders said, noting that it also has contributed to the overall decline in members, as parish–level women’s groups have chosen to drop their affiliation to the national group. The national group has lost about a third of its local affiliates —a drop from 5,290 to 3,793 — since 2002, she said. The proposal originally placed before the delegates would have transformed the National Council of Catholic Women completely into an individual–membership organization, with each member entitled to one vote at conventions. Parish and diocesan affiliates would have become more like chapters of individual members, with no voting power as a group. In the compromise version adopted Sept. 25, according to a follow–up interview with organization spokeswoman Andrea Schellman, individual memberships will be encouraged within affiliates. At conventions, she said, each individual member will have one vote and each affiliate group will have two. IS THE BOARD TOO BIG?The delegates also watered down a proposal for a much smaller board of directors. Under the bylaws as they stood during the Sept. 24 session, the board could include as many as 41 members, including officers, commission chairs, ecclesial province directors and others. “Imagine getting 41 people around your dinner table to agree on anything,” said Eunice Washa, a regional vice president who reported on issues related to governance of the organization. She was speaking in favor of a plan to remove the 28 province director slots from the board of directors. Schellman said in the follow–up interview with the Florida Catholic that the membership made some reductions in the size of the board, including replacing three regional vice presidencies with a single president–elect position beginning in 2011, but opted to keep the more than two dozen province directors on the board of directors. Though the bylaws vote left the board quite large, it did remedy what was widely considered to be the bigger problem: The old bylaws put the organization at odds with the law in the District of the Columbia, the jurisdiction in which the organization is incorporated. Washa said the revised bylaws fix that by giving the board clear authority to make decisions for the organization; that authority rested with the voting membership before the changes.
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