2004 Membership Secretary Report
I took on the role of Membership Secretary for ASFLA in September 2003, after it
had been held for the previous 18 months by Seong-Woo Lee. My report thus reflects
activity since September, 2003 only. I note that there are no existing copies of
Membership reports from past meetings so have attempted to record the way
memberships are currently being processed for future reference.
Currently, ASFLA operates a data base of 249 names, which includes 58 paid
memberships. This 58 is broken down into 3 types of memberships:
- 8 Life Members
- 38 Full Members ($40)
- 12 Student Members ($25)
Current ASFLA Life Members are: Frances Christie, Michael Lewis, Brian Dare,
Claire Painter, John Polias, Len Unsworth, Geoff Williams, & Dai Fei Yang.
A significant comment to make regarding the other 50 paid memberships is that 23 of
these were not recorded as members in 2003. This may have been a record-keeping
error, but there have been many new members added to the data base in the past 8
months.
The remaining names on the database have been retained as Contacts: these are made
up of past members who have not paid membership this year or those who have
responded to our emails or mail outs. It may be useful for ASFLA to retain these
people as resources in advertising future conferences and association activites. The
majority of database names are based in Australia, but we currently have a number of
international contacts and members.
In order to update membership details for ASFLA, an email was sent out on Sysfling
in October, 2003. This yielded a number of new, interested people and updated the
data base significantly. From this we sent out over 200 membership reminders in
December. taking time to format eye-catching flyers, which may explain the interest
from new members. I suggest that the executive investigate further means of
publicising the association’s activities and strengthening its membership..
We have also tried to maximise mail-out opportunities to provide information to
members and contacts. In the December mail out we were able to include the usual
President’s report along with a flyer advertising the Brisbane conference. When
sending receipts earlier this year, there was the opportunity to send reminders about
Brisbane and the Sydney conference later in the year. This seems to make the most of
the information held on the data base and would be a useful resource for those
organising conferences in the future.
The ASFLA database is operated through Filemaker Pro 5, a program for which we
have no substantial manual and is not generally well-known in our IT department.
Thus, it has been difficult to get operating with any degree of efficiency, but is now
able to generate receipts linked to the database and hold receipting information. Tax
requirements have also meant adding more receipt information to the database and
keeping more stringent records. Membership can be paid over the internet as well as
credit card and cheque and I work in collaboration with Susan Hoadley in Sydney
who processes the finances and sends information to me for receipting. So far this
system is working quite well around our own academic commitments.
Finally, The Department of Language, Literacy and The Arts at The University of
Melbourne needs to be acknowledged for the support it has given to ASFLA through
the use of facilities and defraying the cost of postage.
Marie Quinn, membership secretary