Silicon Valley Women’s Caucus for Art (SVWCA) is a 501.c3. SVWCA formed in 1989 and we have 33 members to date. Two things are notable about SVWCA – it has a healthy bank balance and lacks board members. At least no elected board members for this next term.
For a little perspective on what changed since I was elected President in 2009, I first proposed two changes in the chapter charter; 1) cancel the historian board position and use the website as a historical repository and 2) switch out our mailed paper newsletter for an email marketing service, such as MailChimp. As a side-note, in 2005 Facebook started in a tiny office across the street from my gallery in downtown Palo Alto.
As board members first timed out in 2011, it was getting more difficult to find volunteer board members. The blocker seemed to be calendaring physical board meetings, so we amended the charter once again allowing board meetings through conference calls. In 2013, we formed a Facebook group to give members an easy way to interact, find our chapter news, or just post new art and event invitations for each other.
Facebook SVWCA is very popular; so much that today we have 119 Facebook members. Compare that to the 33 paid chapter members.
2016 is my ninth year on the board as president and social media manager and there are no replacements in sight. All of our board members have served more than one term. But this is not because they necessarily wanted to stay on, but because no one else stepped up, in spite of calls to action and announcing we’d have to dissolve if there was no interest in running the chapter.
I believe non-action is a two-part reason, traffic is more dense than 30 years ago but mostly because the internet has changed everything - including how artists relate to their peers.
Now the really interesting story here is the position our board is in. We have a solid bank account, but no one who want to manage it any longer. In the last eight years we’ve underwritten very large, national level events as well as local, small low-budget ones. All of these events were great experiences for us collectively, but now it’s time to close up shop, so we discussed what the rules of the exit plan could be. And they are as follows:
●Each board member must plan an event that is beneficial to themselves and chapter members who opt-in.
●It must be something that does not depend on a large volunteer pool.
●The budget for each event is divided equally between each board member.
●It is up the discretion of the organizer if the event is completely free to chapter members, or if there is a small fee.
●We must enact all the plans and spend the money by January 2017.
As a board, we’re all pretty excited about this opportunity. The hard part is announcing to other members that this is a good thing, that they can join the Northern California chapter and stay in touch with each other as they did before – email, Facebook, and now NCWCA meetings. It’s going to be a fast and busy 2016 by winding up six SVWCA board artists’ fantasy events.
For a little perspective on what changed since I was elected President in 2009, I first proposed two changes in the chapter charter; 1) cancel the historian board position and use the website as a historical repository and 2) switch out our mailed paper newsletter for an email marketing service, such as MailChimp. As a side-note, in 2005 Facebook started in a tiny office across the street from my gallery in downtown Palo Alto.
As board members first timed out in 2011, it was getting more difficult to find volunteer board members. The blocker seemed to be calendaring physical board meetings, so we amended the charter once again allowing board meetings through conference calls. In 2013, we formed a Facebook group to give members an easy way to interact, find our chapter news, or just post new art and event invitations for each other.
Facebook SVWCA is very popular; so much that today we have 119 Facebook members. Compare that to the 33 paid chapter members.
2016 is my ninth year on the board as president and social media manager and there are no replacements in sight. All of our board members have served more than one term. But this is not because they necessarily wanted to stay on, but because no one else stepped up, in spite of calls to action and announcing we’d have to dissolve if there was no interest in running the chapter.
I believe non-action is a two-part reason, traffic is more dense than 30 years ago but mostly because the internet has changed everything - including how artists relate to their peers.
Now the really interesting story here is the position our board is in. We have a solid bank account, but no one who want to manage it any longer. In the last eight years we’ve underwritten very large, national level events as well as local, small low-budget ones. All of these events were great experiences for us collectively, but now it’s time to close up shop, so we discussed what the rules of the exit plan could be. And they are as follows:
●Each board member must plan an event that is beneficial to themselves and chapter members who opt-in.
●It must be something that does not depend on a large volunteer pool.
●The budget for each event is divided equally between each board member.
●It is up the discretion of the organizer if the event is completely free to chapter members, or if there is a small fee.
●We must enact all the plans and spend the money by January 2017.
As a board, we’re all pretty excited about this opportunity. The hard part is announcing to other members that this is a good thing, that they can join the Northern California chapter and stay in touch with each other as they did before – email, Facebook, and now NCWCA meetings. It’s going to be a fast and busy 2016 by winding up six SVWCA board artists’ fantasy events.
