President's Letter
The President of the Native Sons and Daughters pens a letter to the membership in each newsletter. We excerpt those letters here.
November 2008
With our economic environment growing ever more troublesome daily, we as the responsible stewards of our organization, are obliged to focus on the financial management of our resources to ensure the preservation so necessary to our future operations. A more intense awareness will be necessary in our day to day operation's expenses.
Toward that end we have taken steps to aid our operating procedures; the President's Advisory Committee is but one example. The creation and staffing of our Communications Sommittee is but another. Working Committees aid our total effort but when their work involves organizational policy, it must be viewed in the nature of recommendations, not organizational policy. We must not short circuit the Board's authority nor move too hastily as we present new problems for operations, internally and externally; operating expenses and staff, paid and unpaid, can be carefully managed without unduly hampering those operations which have served us well over the years.
Recently, our Vice President, Dan Sturdevant, prepared a letter I approved, listing steps 1 through 8 and their timing, to tighten operations toward the end of making them more efficient and timely. Strict observance should improve our efforts to serve the community in the preservation of our ten county Kansas City history. If those time tables are generally acceptable to our Board then their timing could
be adjusted to fit each quarter of operations throughout the year's operations.
There is a need for strengthening our operating systems for future guidance of our Administrative Secretary and all working Committees. Toward that end, I have forwarded to our Marker's Chairman, Roger Smith, and our President's Advisory Committee for policy adoption consideration, my 4 page authored summary of "Suggested Guidelines for Evaluations of Locations for Marker Placement". Those were drawn from the "National Landmarks Standards."
I can only hope the spirit of these efforts might draw others into stronger support of and for NSDKC.
Prepared by Tom Sims, President