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Dear Family, Ten years ago this month, I assumed a leadership role in the John Walker Family Organization at the Reunion held in Nauvoo, IL. This eventually led to additional opportunities, most recently taking on the role of Executive Director at the passing of Rodney Walker . This month I would like to share my thoughts on the current state of the Family Organization and to invite your comments about the next ten years, and beyond.
A generation or two ago, the leaders of this organization were much closer. Many grew up with each other and had a long history of family outings and events. This family organization became a natural extension of that activity. Today we are in a much different situation, and as we near an estimated 100,000 “cousins” a new reality of the organizational is essential I have always felt that this was a worthwhile cause and one worth nurturing and have done my best to create an infrastructure designed to accomplish our mission. But, like many non-profit organization, we struggle to remain viable. Thankfully our survival now is less about money and more about the resources of human energy or time; time to do administrative work, content management, creative thinking, research, and writing. These are all talents that you collectively possess to a significant degree. Most of you look upon our activities favorably, yet only a few of you are currently involved with your time, and I would love to know why. Is it the lack of charismatic leadership, too broad of an audience, the perception of no work needing to be done? Or is it a lack of convenient and simple input processes? Or do you think the organization has outgrown its purpose, or origins? I truly believe that in order to succeed we must find a way to effectively gather core data from a widely distributed audience with more automated interaction. In short the only way we can prosper is to use the variety of technologies now available through the medium of the internet. How we go about doing this is our challenge and I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Please take a moment to reflect on what the Family Organization means to you, and how can we get better serve your interests by completing a sort survey at the following link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229JCDWGBUS Thanks for your ongoing support,
David Walker
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