The Irish Wolfhound Club of America Liaison Committee

Liaison Committee: Eileen M. Flanagan, ph: 908-850-3448

 

Liaison Committee Chair Letter to IW Regional Clubs: Carrickaneena 168 Blau Road Hackettstown, NJ 07840 May 10, 2007 Dear IWCA Regional Club President, My name is Eileen Flanagan and I serve on the Irish Wolfhound Club of America Board of Directors as Vice President. Currently I chair the Club Liaison Committee and have the help of Cathy Heintz and Carolyn Purvis. As a regional club President, I am inviting you to join the committee as well. I hope to listen to your suggestions about how the IWCA can better serve the local regional clubs. Let me share three ways I’ve thought about so far. Please add to this list and tell me what your priorities are. Also, I hope you will discuss this letter with your members. What Could the IWCA Club Liaison Committee Do? First, I think this committee could represent the interests of regional clubs in a more formal way at IWCA Board meetings. Not every club is represented on the Board and there needs to be someone who will ensure that your concerns and viewpoints are addressed completely and fairly. Second, the IWCA could have a regional clubs page on the website where members and nonmembers alike could see your activities such as shows, educational programs, and concerns involving rescue, legislation, or other issues. We are especially interested in highlighting the innovative things you are doing so that we can advertise and share your “best practices.” This could be as simple as a short description with a link to your website. Or you can develop something special. We also think this could serve to direct new members to your club (and ours!!) Third, we would like to encourage closer collaboration with the IWCA in sponsoring joint events. We know this may take some planning. But I think that the IWCA and the Board and its resources can be more helpful. Of course, I will work to be an advocate for obtaining approval for your specialties and encouraging membership—issues I know are important at the regional club level. What are Some Possible Resources We Could Provide? We believe that by sharing information, the IWCA website can provide useful information to all clubs. For example, some members have said that it would be helpful to have a spreadsheet listing all the judges from all U.S. specialties for the past 10 years or so. This would make it easier to identify, plan for, and select judges for future specialties and avoid repeating judges who have recent assignments elsewhere. It would also be useful to share information about lesser known judges who did a great job. If any of you has a list for your club already, we would appreciate receiving a copy so that we can build the spreadsheet. Another resource is to have an information table of current regional club officers—or at least Presidents. You would think that this information is readily available, but surprisingly it isn’t. You will find at the end of this letter a table. Would you please check the information and see if it is complete and correct? If you are willing, we would like to at least publish your contact information on the IWCA website. If you would prefer that your information not be included, just let me know. During the recent IWCA election, I was a member of the Protect and Involve candidate team which endorsed a strategic plan (www.IW-Protect-Involve.com). Our third goal and objectives are: “Encourage Regional Irish Wolfhound Clubs” 1. Encourage regional clubs to communicate their members’ needs and concerns to the IWCA Board with an expectation of receiving a timely, thoughtful, and respectful response. 2. Encourage regional clubs to ask their members to join and participate in the IWCA. 3. Sponsor joint events at regional and national levels. 4. Support regional IW clubs’ efforts to execute the AKC desires for more sporting, educational, and civic activities. 5. Use the IWCA as a clearinghouse of information and expertise for regional clubs. Our associate membership application is up on the website and we are working to get our active member application on line as well. We hope that as we prove ourselves you will have a reason to encourage your members to join the IWCA or, for some of you, to join the IWCA yourselves. We really are trying to move the club in a positive direction. Can we Build a Joint Description of the Club Liaison Committee? My thought about a possible description for the work of this committee follows. I would welcome your suggestions to improve it. If you can broaden your inclusiveness to surrounding states, we can ensure that all IWCA members can be part of a local regional club. Please let me know what you think of that idea as well. The IWCA Regional Club Liaison Committee will serve as: a) a direct link to the IWCA for regional clubs and their members when necessary, b) a resource when needing to navigate questions or issues that cross several IWCA committees, c) an advocate to increase membership within the regional club and the IWCA, and d) a facilitator of closer collaboration so that the IWCA and regional clubs can work more closely together. Can we Work Together across Clubs and Committees? Part of our strategic plan was to try and work across committees. For example, Jill Bregy currently serves as the Chair of the Education Committee. If you are doing a great educational program, please let Jill and me know. We want to learn from you and alert other clubs so they can contact you as well. As another example, Donna Brown serves as Chair of the Legislation Committee. Although the local clubs monitor legislation in the states surrounding them, letting the IWCA know about your issues would allow our President to write a letter of support as she recently did in California and for you to do the same if you are so inclined. Similarly there are current legislative efforts underway at the national level in the aftermath of the pet food recall. The IWCA may also ask the regional club presidents to write letters of support on national issues. If possible, we want to be smarter about ways we can work together and across our respective clubs and committees. If there are other ways you know the IWCA or I could be more helpful, would you please let me know? Are there other goals you believe are important for the IWCA? The contact doesn’t have to be from you personally. Don’t hesitate to ask other club members to call—our committee will be happy to work with other club members charged with specific responsibilities. Our website has a new red button on the home page called “Club News” that our webmaster, Pat Reilley can update easily. Would You Please Help the IWCA with Your Ideas and Involvement? Part of the Protect and Involve election team’s promise was to involve our members (and clubs). We would ask for you or someone you designate from your club to become a member of this committee. It will help me make direct contact with your club, ensure that your club has a voice, help us achieve our objectives, add new objectives that you identify, and build our “bench strength” for future leaders of the IWCA. The people who serve on the front lines of regional club leadership are in great positions to understand the challenges of a national club. Also, too often the regional clubs have been underrepresented or ignored at the national club level. We want to remedy that so that the IWCA remains focused on protecting our breed and involving our members. I look forward to hearing your ideas, incorporating your suggestions, and getting to know those of you I haven’t met yet. Our common ground is our love of Irish Wolfhounds and our common focus needs to be how we can work together to protect our breed in the future. Let’s use our regional and national clubs to do great things together. Thank you for your time and effort in building these important bridges to helping our Irish Wolfhounds across the U.S. A list of the local IWCA affiliated club president contact information appears below. Please note that the document is in Landscape format for easier viewing. Please send me corrections and updates and your willingness to be listed on the IWCA website. In some cases, I could not find your contact information on the website or on the IWCA membership roster. Thank you. Sincerely, Eileen Flanagan 908-850-3448 Carrickaneena@comcast.net

 

 

Club Responses: Dear Eileen, I think opening the lines of communication - both ways - will be critical to the success of the committee. I don't think you need an e-list but if you could create a group address for the committee and send an update after the board meetings, it would provide info for the presidents or representatives to share with their respective clubs and also will create a sense of being involved. I think the new board has already improved communication 1000% but having something coming directly to this group, both info and questions, will help them feel they are "at the table." The second thing I would try to do is get the members of the committee to meet at the various regional specialties. Email is great but sometimes you need to have the face to face so that people feel connected. I love the idea of joint ventures but wonder if it's only relevant in the northeast - good first topic for the group to discuss. I'd also like to know more about the specialties that we can't get to, like the west coast, and want to share with them ideas like our veterans classes separated by age. Maybe start a spreadsheet for non regular classes and events and have each club with a specialty fill in what they do. It would be nice to see IWCA sweatshirts and tees at the specialties again in addition to that years specialty shirts. I'll keep thinking. John English, President IWAGS Dear Eileen: Your letter to the Regional Club Presidents is great. The NCIWC's next meeting is August 18th and I have put this subject on the agenda. I will let the Board and guest members know that the Associate Membership applications are now on the IWCA website and I will encourage them to join. I really need to promote the fact that the IWCA Board is very anxious to share information with all Clubs and I will. The NCIWC is still contemplating back to back Specialties in the future, with IWCA permission, of course. This may go on the back burner for a while because the National is heading our way! Yeah! As to the last 10 years of Judges we have had at our Specialties; 1998 - Nancy Aiken 1999 - Mary Major, 2000 - Jill Bregy, 2001 - Beverly Little, 2002 - Joel Samaha, 2003 - Leopold Borello, 2004 - Betty Anne Stenmark, 2005 - Michael Canalizo, 2006 - Eileen Flanagan, 2007 - Jim Behan. It sure was great to be in Sacramento when AB1634 was withdrawn!!! Hope all is well. Carol Eileen, As you know IWADV is an old established club with many seasoned members who mentor most new members as breeders. As you also know we try to keep an eye on and influence those not as focused on the things that we believe are important to the breed. Your letter was very comprehensive and aimed at the issues important to IWADV. To that end we support the general direction that the liaison committee is taking. Please let us know how we can contribute as this gets up and running. Thank you for your dedication in this effort. Amy Benjamin, President IWADV Dear Eileen, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you sooner. I sent a request to the IWAWC board for input for you and got almost nothing back. I think we can do better, but only in the context of a meeting, which we haven’t had since April. I’ll give you what little I got, and also my own personal thoughts, and will continue to try to pursue your original questions as I meet face to face with the board. Alexis Montgomery, IWAWC’s present secretary asked me to forward the following request to you: Please define the role of Regional Club as opposed to Local Club. Is there a difference under IWCA guidelines? As for me, I think a much needed role for the Liaison Committee is simply to keep the Regional Club leadership appraised of any issues that will ultimately effect us, and give us an opportunity to react in advance of the decisions that are being made. Not every issue would need to come to us; we would not need to be involved in IWCA’s administrative decisions, for example. A good example of something that does involve us, however, is the new system for rotating the specialty sites that is beginning in 2009. The decision to do this is a positive step, I feel, but it was nevertheless presented to us as a fait accompli, and even at the time it was presented, there was no attempt to solicit comments or suggestions. Is moving the specialty every year the best thing? In what order should the rotation move among the five regions? Who decided that five was the correct number of regions? As far as I know, no input from the regional clubs was solicited before these decisions were made, and in cases like this, it would have been nice to be involved. As to a Resource that IWCA could provide, I will pass along a request from one of IWAWC’s members: Judy Speirs lives in Utah, and finds herself the senior wolfhounder to whom many new owners come for advice. She is not always sure she has the right answers and would like to see a network of mentors that were willing to be called if an owner had a problem or needed advice about their wolfhound. (As I see it, this service should be performed only by the most reputable and experienced mentors.) Many of these newer IW owners are unaffiliated with any club, and this might be a way to get them “inside the fold”. Is this something IWCA could take on as a service to IW owners in far-flung and isolated places? Thank you, Eileen, for attempting to make a useful tool of the Liaison committee. I will send, separately a list of judges we’ve used to add to your judges spreadsheet. Pat Cobb