Dear Vermont Chapter CSI Member,
I am writing to update you on discussions happening at the board level about the future of CSI Vermont. To put it plainly, we are struggling to keep the chapter going. We are currently a board of four (down from seven a decade ago), and three of us have been on the chapter board for more than ten years. With our small chapter membership, it has been a struggle to find members who are interested in volunteering. Those of us currently on the board have stayed because we want to keep the chapter active, but we are all also over-committed and burned out.
Three of us on the board have rotated through the leadership positions over the last several years, and our fourth member is taking on added responsibilities in his job. We don't feel that it's healthy for the chapter for us to continue in leadership roles, but don't have good candidates to bring in, so we aren't sure that we will have a slate of officers available for FY2023. We have reached out to advisors at the national level of CSI and come up with three potential paths forward.
- Temporarily 'hibernate' the chapter. Perhaps maintain board members for the purposes of maintaining our non-profit corporate status, but do not expect those individuals to push forward with regular meetings, events, etc. Re-assess annually, or if the situation changes.
- Close the chapter. This is an option, although does not seem necessary.
- Merge with neighboring chapters. Upstate NY, New Hampshire and Maine have all been discussed as other small and challenged chapters. Expanding geography would increase the volunteer pool and may provide the volunteer bandwidth to set up an useful administrative or executive director role as well. This, in potential combination with option 1 above, is looking to a likely option and conversations have already begun with neighboring chapters experiencing similar challenges.
All of these are of course presuming that we do not have the volunteer time and capacity locally to rebuild our chapter board and volunteer base. Changing work patterns, the disruptions caused by Covid, and the improvements in quality and frequency of AIA organized activities all make this appear likely to our current board.
We would very much like to hear every member's thoughts on this, hopefully in an open discussion forum.
We are hosting a zoom meeting on Tuesday May 31 at 5:30 PM:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84967601168?pwd=TkpKYk4wQTZWTm9LSHk3WFYxcG00Zz09
I cordially invite you to attend. If you are unable to come, but have thoughts to share, please direct them to vermontcsi@gmail.com.
In the meantime, we hope as many of you as possible plan to join us at ACX on Thursday! For more information visit www.acxvermont.com. There is still time to sign up today.
------------------------------
Brian Leet CSI, AIA, LEED AP
Freeman French Freeman
Burlington, VT
------------------------------