Jim Ziobro for Rochester Section Vice Chair

A little about my IEEE volunteer history. It goes back 20 years.

Send in your questions to Jim Ziobro an I'll add the answer here.

Is the money the Section spends really from my IEEE dues?

Whether the exact dollar you insert into the IEEE is the exact dollar the Section spends is irrelevant. The Section can make those dollars equivalent.

I have submitted the question of returning member dues to IEEE staff. The answer is that as long as no published policy prohibit a rebate then a Section may do it. I plan to put a dues rebate into the Section Budget. It has always been in our power. Apparently nobody thought of it before.

My greatest desire for the rebate is that it changes the mindset of how the Section spends your money. The mindset change is more important than a few dollars change in dues.

How do you plan to grow membership?

I first need to stop the decline. I hope that the members who plan on leaving at the end of this year see that true change is coming. Should we be able to reduce dues then I would make it for renewals only.

It is not up to a single person to run the Section. As Chair I can open some of the closed doors. I made sure the EXCOM Meeting Minutes came back online in 2011. This was something I started when I was last in office. Published minutes are a great communication and colaboration tool. It really encourages participation outside of the regular EXCOM as well as provide transparency.

We need to reset priorities. The IEEE serves the public. That does not mean the IEEE should give away (member) money to everyone or provide service for free. We need to emphasize the benefit of membership. Once we do that the members will come.

You said we allocated too much for student activities. What is the appropriate funding for Student Activities? -- Howard

Yes, I gave an example of bad payoff for our budget allocation. We have about 100 student members yet we could have paid the dues on 300 "warm bodies" with the amount of money that we allocated.

The core issue is that we never even say what we hope to accomplish with that money! Since we never say what we hope to accomplish we can not say whether we successfully applied that money. We only know that the large allocation did not encourage students to join the IEEE.

If we can"t say whether we did good or bad then we have no hope of getting better.

This file last modified Wednesday, 02-Oct-2013 13:38:59 EDT