What is Association Doing for Me?

Ruth Sweetser
Association Director-at-Large
sweetser@iit.edu; 630/495-0985

April 2004

Thanks to everyone who attended the March 9 "Charting the Road Less Traveled" event at LaSalle Bank. AAUW had a great showing and increased our visibility in the Chicago area exponentially. As one of the presenters, I appreciate your support and trust you enjoyed the program--to say nothing of the great company of ACBW and WITI, plus the fabulous food!

For this article I'm going to try to respond to a question posed to me recently by some members: What is Association doing for me? Items below constitute just a portion of programming and resources available via the Association for use in branches/states for their efforts in, and beyond, the branch:

• Materials for promoting education and equity for women and girls in schools (e.g., Choices)
• Complete event planning materials for community action events around "Transitions" and Women's Summits
• EF Research reports, most recently, "Women at Work," also "Tech Savvy," "Hostile Hallways II"
• LAF cases for inspiration, litigants available for program presentation
• Advocacy opportunities
• Adelante! Diversity reading list
• Mission in Action: electronic update via the website Ý Website resources for branch administration
• National Conference for College Women Student Leaders
• Representation by leaders at prestigious and critical events--so that information can be relayed to the grassroots, e.g., Ford Foundation on Center for Advancement of Women reports, etc.
• Collateral (brochures, screensaver, etc.), with the highly relevant tagline, "Because equity is still an issue."

Since AAUW is an "advocacy organization, " a 501c(4), our purpose is to promote education and equity for women and girls. Since we are already educated, our focus is to learn (educate ourselves) about how best to do our mission, about issues. If we just educate ourselves about a myriad of possibly interesting topics which don't enhance our raison d'etre, we betray our purpose and those who need us.

As Bowling Alone so aptly portrays, potential members no longer flock to organizations; the organization needs to go to them. Going to the public with our programming (partial list above) without prior visibility is tough--even with the long-standing credibility of AAUW as an organization. So, we need to, in many cases, start by building (or increasing) visibility and interest.

How? First, we tap the resources provided by the Association (list above) because the materials are credible in content and designed for outreach--[hence the implicit partnership between Association and Branches].

Second, make a plan for connecting with the leaders of your community using the AAUW pieces which resonate with each one: schools, school administrators, school/parent organizations, community colleges, universities, businesses (collectively and individually), and community-based organizations, almost all of which have an interest in serving girls (but probably don't know that "one size fits all" doesn't work).

As former Association President, Sarah Harder, observed: "AAUW members must not sit on our assets." While general continuing education/learning is available everywhere (numerous organizations, publications, the Internet, schools, the media), the combination of learning in order to advocate for women and girls is not. AAUW is a rare and thus extremely valuable organization if we put the pieces together: Association resources + branch action = advocacy, without which there is no "positive societal change."

AAUW-IL, Inc.

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Last modified 7/30/05