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Hello Sierra Nevada Region Members, Friends and Sponsors,
As I write this on the eve of November 15th, I would like to remind you that November 15th is a very important date for our clubs. We have the Live Your Dream Portal closing at the end of the day, we need to make sure all club treasurers have submitted a Form 990 to the IRS, and we have our Sierra Nevada Region Nomination close for those running for our Region Nominations committee.
On top of that we have two clubs celebrating charter anniversaries today: SI South Yuba and SI Trinity County.
Earlier this week Gov Elect Kathy, and I were on a Region Governor and Governor Elect virtual call with SIA HQ. So much great information is coming your way for 2025! Our agenda for this call included the following topics: Member Code of Conduct, the 49th Biennial Convention in South Korea, content for the 2025 Region Conferences and an update on the ongoing technology transformation going on at SIA.
Let’s start off with the topic of the Member Code of Conduct. SIA’s Chief
Impact and Engagement Officer Iesha D. Brown, reported on July 5th, 2024,
SIA’s Board of Directors approved SIA’s first ever member and leader code
of conduct. During that meeting in July, SIA staff were tasked with
documenting a high-level framework providing guidance to our members
and leaders if the code of conduct was breached. The board approved the
following process to resolve this process. Generally, conflicts or grievances
fall into two categories. Personality conflicts and Governance related
conflicts. There are now tier processes that club, the Region and SIA will
follow. As soon as these slides become available, we will share them with
clubs through our Eblast. SIA HQ will launch an Open Call for volunteers in
December for a work group to document the governance process. Call for
volunteers will close in January 2025, recommendations from this group will
be submitted to SIA President Dr. Ginger Cole by mid-February and you
will see a kick-off of this information in mid-March of 2025. If you think you
would like to volunteer for this SIA Work Group, please apply when the call
becomes available in December.
Next, we discussed the 49th Biennial Convention in South Korea and the
mandatory convention fee. I spoke a little about this at the fall district
meetings. Make sure your club’s budget for this mandatory fee. We suggest
half this year and then half in the next club year. The SIA Convention in
Incheon, South Korea will be held July 22 – 25, 2026. SIA HQ has pledged
that for future conventions they will provide much earlier notification about
the mandatory club convention fee. It was suggested that clubs should
expect a similar price point for future convention fees. This was brought
before the SIA board of directors October 2024 meeting. Why is there a
mandatory Convention Club fee? This fee helps SIA afford the General
Membership Business Meeting, and Convention and related expenses.
This fee covers one delegate’s registration from each club. This fee must
be paid per SIA’s procedures by every SIA club whether a club sends a
delegate or not. At the October SIA Board of Directors meeting, they
approved the following: a $25 increase to the mandatory convention fee
resulting in a $825 mandatory convention fee for the 49th Biennial
Convention. They cited the declining number of SIA clubs and the
increased costs for events as their reasoning for this increase. SIA will
invoice for the mandatory convention club fee on or before January 15,
2026. The fee is payable to SIA no later than March 15, 2026. Clubs that
do not pay SIA by 15, 2026 or have a payment plan in place by that date
will be assessed 10% of the Mandatory Convention Club fee ($82.50).
Initial communications to club Presidents and Treasurers will occur by the
end of this month. Follow-up communications and planning will occur in
December of 2025 and then January through March of 2026 SIA HQ will
have on-going communications about this mandatory fee. One last item on
this topic was the SIA Board did approve the following: to update the SIA
procedures section C. Fees; Item #5. To eliminate convention fees for clubs
chartered or reinstated as of July 1 of the club year preceding a convention.
So, this will be effective starting on July 1, 2025, for the new club year. If
you have any questions about this or anything else, please reach out to
either Gov Elect Kathy or me.
I know it’s a lot to take in and take back to your clubs for discussion. You’ll
see more in our upcoming Eblasts about some of the other topics we
discussed.
With our Region’s Fall District Meetings behind us we also want to hear
from you, the members who attended our Fall District meetings. We have
put together a POST Meeting Survey to help us make our next round of
meetings even better. If you attended one of our Fall District Meetings,
please help us out by doing our survey.
CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK
Looking forward to hearing all about the fundraisers and events in our
Region this holiday season. Make sure to submit your flyer and information
to the Eblast and share with all the clubs and members in our region. Just
send to the email at the bottom of this eblast at least 3 days prior to our
publication dates of the 1st and 15th of each month. Till next time,
With gratitude,
Stacey Jensen
Sierra Nevada Region Governor 2024-2026
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