** Following is an open letter released by the Arabian Horse Association to its members **
Dear Fellow AHA Members,
The Regional Restructure Task Force was formed by AHA President Nancy Harvey last summer to review our current organizational structure, decide if changes might be needed, and if so, create a proposal to present to a future Annual Convention for consideration. We have held several conference calls and conducted a forum at Convention seeking input from the delegates in attendance.
An observation that we made, and was also brought up at our forum, was that our current governance structure creates a 29-person AHA Board, and that is rather large. We have compared our structure to other member-based, horse breed and discipline-related associations, and we found that they have varying board sizes and are also looking at their board structures. Multiple governance studies that were commissioned following our merger and the formation of AHA made recommendations that our governance could be more streamlined.
We discussed possible ways that we could update our structure. A few summaries are: 1. Leave our structure as is, in the current form; 2. Leave the current regions in place but create a new, smaller governing Board of Directors and Executive Committee; 3. Decrease the number of regions to a lesser number resulting in a smaller Board of Directors. Each option has its own pluses and minuses.
An on-going side topic within our Task Force has been the number of regional shows in our current structure and the problems created by that number, for both the sponsoring regions and the owners and exhibitors who make the shows possible. This is not officially part of our charge, but we do realize that this is also an issue that could be addressed as the shows directly affect the success of the hosting region.
We have created a survey for you that will allow you, our AHA Members, to voice your opinions and desires to our group giving us guidance on how you feel we should go forward. PLEASE TAKE SURVEY HERE Thank you in advance for your participation and assistance.
Sincerely,
Regional Restructure Task Force
Penny Wardlaw, Chair
-- via AHA