Why doesn't ANA try this for one year?

[oramar]

I am one of the people who always felt as if the ANA was out of touch. Some tell me that is not true anymore. OK, I will give it a chance. How about having a one time/one year sign up for $75. It might bring in a lot of people who would not join otherwise. The down size is the possiblity it will anger those who have been paying those heavy duty dues for many years.

[-jt]

Last year the nurse members themselves voted to raise the portion of dues sent to the ANA to $125/yr.

At the moment & historically, nurses are/were not actually individual members of the ANA. They are members of their state associations and the state association itself is the member of the ANA.

Each state assoc has a number of nurse delegates in the ANA depending on their own membership numbers. The nurse becomes connected to the ANA by becoming a member of her state association.

The state association then pays the ANA $125 annual dues for each RN - taken out of the membership dues the RN pays the state assoc.

Each state assoc sets its own membership dues amount - usually decided by a vote of the membership - but the assocs all pay the same $125 to the ANA for each RN member.

Currently there is discussion on changing some things in ANA. Whatever the proposals are that the members & the leadership bring forth, they will all be discussed, considered & decided upon at this years annual convention in Philadelphia by the nurses who have been elected delegates by nurse members of their own state associations - & have been elected to cast the vote for their state on the issues (similar to Congress House of Representatives).

The ANA office cant just make a decision on its own to go along with your suggestion. Whether or not nurses will be able to bypass their state assoc & join the ANA independently & directly, which might just end up being an incentive to not join the state assoc & thus do more harm than good by crippling the state assoc, is something that would have to be reviewed & decided on by the vote of nurse member delegates of every state assoc - not by some executive sitting in an office somewhere in DC.

Its a democracy & the nurse members have the say on what it does.

[oramar]

When there is something I need to do and ought to do(but I really don't want to do it) I can come up with a list of reasons why that can't make the change. In effect I am tying my own hands. I guess this holds for orginizations also.