On September 5, the IFRT Strategic Planning Task Force met. As part of our effort for transparency in planning to the membership, we plan on sharing notes throughout this process. If you have comments or things you'd like to add for us to consider, please respond to this thread or reach out to me directly. Our next meeting will be October 26 at 2pm EDT.
We discussed the first draft of survey going out to membership.
Those questions and comments can be found here.Here are the notes from that meeting and the accompanying SWOT analysis:
Strengths
- One of the larger round tables (membership around 1,250)
- Round table structure
- Other intellectual freedom things out there
- More accessible as an RT
- Strong, supportive staff at OIF
- Excellent financial position
- Well attended programs at conferences
- Visible output (things get accomplished)
- Heritage and a history inside the association
- Awards (Oboler, Hodges, Imroth, Emerging Leader)
- Tied to a core professional value
- Engaged board leadership
- Numerous opportunities for volunteers
- Well-considered inside association
- Friendly / open to new people
- Membership and Publications committees (increased output in last few years)
- Voice holds weight in membership discussions inside ALA
Weaknesses
- Effective communications with members
- Improved in recent years, but still some distance to go
- May not be unique to IFRT
- Engaging a wider range of members
- Bandwidth to take on new projects
- Same faces taking on new things all the times
- Why do we want to get bigger?
- How to get involved / structure of committees and RT impermeable to new members
- Amount/level of communication between board members between conferences
- Amount/level of communication on committees
- Lack of output of professional tools (like the Open to All toolkit from GLBTRT)
- Some over-reliance on OIF staff for leadership
- Same organizational structure we have always had
Opportunities
- Tie to a core professional value
- Lack of IF groups in divisions
- Lots of potential partner groups in IF world
- Politically, this is a time when IF issues matter
- Come more directly into dialogue with EDI work
- How do IF and EDI intersect?
- Funding
- Students
- Passionate about IF issues
- Program development by members for IF topics
- Cooperating with other groups in and out of ALA
- Developing webinar topics
- New Executive Director
- Organizational effectiveness changes/discussion
- More types of challenges coming into OIF.
- Opportunity to grow awareness
- Redefine intellectual freedom
- What is IF in a post-2018 world?
- Be there when people need us
Threats
- A LOT of other groups that cross into our area
- IFC, FTRF, OIF
- State level IF groups
- EDI v. IF tension
- Decline in association membership (not just in ALA, but in the world)
- Need to be nimble as a group (don't let institution bog us down)
- Professional reputation of ALA
- Distrust of ALA in some professional conversations
- ALA and IFRT are linked together
- Why bother with ALA/IFRT?
- Organizational effectiveness changes/discussion
- Engaging membership to keep up leadership pipeline
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John Mack Freeman
Branch Manager
Gwinnett County Public Library
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