2024 November President’s Letter
As we are coming close to the end of the year, there are some important items we need to discuss regarding our society.
We are experiencing some troubling trends. Although we are a non-profit organization, we still have expenses. Basically, our only income comes from our membership dues. Our membership dues have remained the same as they’ve been since 1999!
We typically break even financially from our annual meeting. The inflationary economy we are all experiencing has hit us too. Everything costs more.
Why am I talking about this? We will soon be starting our membership drive since our membership year runs January through December. We are still financially viable but looking into the future, I worry about the current trends. Membership and participation in organizations as a whole are down; whether you’re talking about Lions, Rotary, Masons, or genealogy societies. Attendance at our monthly meetings and SIGS is underwhelming.
I would like to ask for your help. Our executive board and I meet monthly, and we discuss matters of importance to our society. These board meetings are open to our membership. We publish the minutes of our board meetings.
Here’s where your help comes in. I would invite you to join our board meetings every so often or read the board meeting minutes that are published on our website. We need to know your thoughts and ideas about making our society more relevant. We want to hear from you about what your expectations are from FHSA.
Our mission is to provide education about how to accomplish your family history research and build your family tree with verifiable records. How to find the stories about how your ancestors lived is another one of our goals. Are we meeting your expectations? Although everyone doesn’t like surveys, your executive board will be working on an electronic survey to try to get answers about what we need to do better to keep our membership growing instead of remaining static.
We will provide this survey before the end of the year and sincerely encourage your participation. We want to understand how we are doing or not doing whichever the case may be. We truly need your help in preparing for the new year. Can you help us? And by the way, my “door” is always open if anyone cares to speak with me privately.
Katie Gertz
president@fhsa.org
