By Bill Wight, NSN Board Chair
Last week, I shared some thoughts with you regarding my vision for NSN in the near term. Today, I’m writing to ask for your comments on a draft strategy to support that vision. The board has been discussing actions we can take to help achieve the vision and to grow NSN in a healthy way. Your input will help us ensure a quality strategy that our membership can enthusiastically support.
Simply put, it’s a strategy of growth by diversity/inclusion of genre and generation. Those words, diversity and inclusion, are often used in today’s parlance to refer to demographic properties like ethnicity, gender, or national origin. While diversity of that nature is assumed, we’d like to use the terms in a broader sense, recognizing and welcoming of all manner of differences, particularly those relating to various forms of storytelling.
The essence of the strategy is simple: being clear about the benefits of membership, attentive to member growth and retention, and diligent to develop sources of external support are all necessary to achieve the growth and diversity we seek. Please look over the draft strategy document and provide us with your feedback as soon as possible.
The best way to share your thoughts regarding this approach is to visit a special topic posted in the “Tell Me About It!” Facebook group for this purpose. There, you’ll be able to see and respond to the comments of others. If you are not yet a member of this group, joining is simple, and requests to join are usually approved quickly.
If you are not a Facebook user or you prefer to provide your feedback another way, you may also leave comments at the end of this blog post, or contact your state liaison (list) via e-mail. You should also feel free to contact any board member with your comments, questions, or suggestions. E-mail addresses are provided on NSN’s web site under “About / Directors & Staff”.
Member participation in developing and executing this strategy is critical to achieving our growth objective. Many of you will be contacted and asked to participate in various ways. But if you’re not immediately contacted, don’t let that keep you from offering your assistance! Contact your state liaison, a board member, or call the office and tell us how you’d like to help. NSN is a membership organization, and I’m calling on all members to help us grow.
What can you do? We’re going to need people to help prepare materials to explain our benefits, work on projects to create new benefits, make calls to prospective members and former members, participate in the development of marketing materials, present workshops or performances at the Summit, serve on planning committees, approach members and groups about donating to NSN – there is no shortage of opportunities! We’ll probably even need people to coordinate the efforts of volunteers. Now is the time to step up and be a part of our success!
But this week, let’s look at the draft strategy, respond with your questions, comments, and suggestions, and make sure that we set out in the right direction with a good plan!
Yours truly,
Bill Wight
Chair, National Storytelling Network
Contact the National Storytelling Network
c/o Woodneath Library
8900 N.E. Flintlock Road
Kansas City, MO 64157
Telephone: (800) 525-4514
Website: https://storynet.org
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