Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Vote Yes on PRSA Bylaw Revisions and Move on to What's Really Important

The PRSA National Delegate Assembly will take place this Saturday in San Diego. I'm a delegate but I can't make it, so I'm sending a proxy voter. She asked how to vote and I told her she was free to vote as she pleased. But I wanted to go on the record to the industry and urge approval of the main item on the agenda, the revision of PRSA's bylaws.

PRSA is a national membership organization based in New York. A staff and Board run the organization, but as a membership body, we have to have an annual meeting to conduct certain business, such as bylaw revisions.

Here's my take on the bylaw revisions -- just do them and vote yes! Then move on to the truly weighty and important issues facing our profession, and not dwell on bureaucratic minutiae.

Almost all nonprofits need to revise their bylaws periodically, as the organization and the external world change. Bylaw changes are almost always overdue, because they are a pain to push through. That's the case here.

I've reviewed the changes a couple of times, looking for nefarious consolidations of power or simply bad ideas, and I can't find them. The revisions appear to me to both modernize the association and streamline decision-making, two worthy objectives.

I took a second close look because there is a faction that has gotten itself extremely worked up about these revisions, but I can't find any cause for alarm.

What does alarm me, however, are the things PRSA's national meeting OUGHT to be dealing with, namely:

  • The lack of enforceable professional standards of practice

  • The lack of clear and low-cost ways of measuring the effectiveness of PR

  • The revolutionary changes roiling the media, communications and the PR industry brought on by the Internet, and how to position and support current practitioners and train the next generation


With delegates across the country representing the best and brightest of the profession sitting in one convention room in San Diego, it would be a perfect time to address and work on these issues. But they won't be on the agenda. And that's the real shame here.

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