communication department

Volume XIX Number 7

Administration

Chapter Financial Reports Due September 30

In June, the STC office mailed forms to chapter presidents and treasurers for their annual chapter financial reports. (Note: Student chapter financial reports were mailed in April, and were due back to the STC office by May 31, 2006.) The form can also be downloaded from the STC Web site. Chapters must submit these forms to the STC office by September 30 to qualify for community funding.

Please fill out the form to cover fiscal year 2006 (July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, for professional chapters). The cash balance for the beginning of the year should agree with the cash balance reported for the end of the fiscal year in last year’s report.

Chapters must include the following supporting materials with the chapter financial report form:

• June 2006 reconciliation statement balancing the chapter’s checkbook against outstanding items (a sample bank reconciliation form is on the STC Web site
• photocopies of the chapter’s bank, money market, and certificate of deposit account statements as of June 30, 2006

Those chapters that realized more than $25,000 in income are also required to complete an IRS 990 or 990EZ form and return it to the Society office before their funds will be issued. The 990 or 990EZ packages were mailed to the appropriate chapters in early July. If your chapter is required to complete one of these forms and did not receive a package from the office, please contact Peg Cottrell at (703) 522-4114 x204.

Completed financial report forms and supporting materials should be mailed to STC, Attn: Peg Cottrell—Chapter Financial Reports, 901 N. Stuart St., Ste. 904, Arlington, VA 22203-1822.

Guidelines for Electronic Voting Procedures

In the past, STC’s Board of Directors has occasionally relied on e-mail to discuss and vote on minor issues pertaining to STC. The Board recently discontinued this practice, however, after learning that its procedures for conducting electronic voting by Board members were not compliant with the laws of New York State, where STC is incorporated, and differed from those outlined in Robert’s Rules of Order.

According to Director Sherry Michaels, Board meetings not conducted in person must include “an appropriate level of discussion.” While telephone conference calls satisfy the requirement that Board members be able to hear and interact with each other, “discussions” via e-mail do not qualify as meetings, so electronic votes by Board members do not have any legal effect unless they are unanimous.

To become more familiar with what is and is not permissible to be voted on electronically, the Board recently participated in a conference call with Jeff Altman, STC’s legal counsel. Altman emphasized the following key points:

• The use of electronic proxy voting in STC’s elections for Society office is permissible.
• New York law guides the Board of Directors at the international level; therefore, the Board may not vote electronically on Board matters unless all of the directors vote unanimously in favor of a motion. However, Board members may vote electronically at the committee or community level as participants of those committees or communities.
• A community may conduct its administrative council business and vote electronically on this business provided the community’s bylaws permit it.
  
• For a community to conduct administrative council elections or otherwise vote electronically, members must ratify a bylaw specifically indicating that this practice will be used. (Michaels says that communities can get advice on how to amend their bylaws by contacting the Leadership Community Resource via the STC office at 703-522-4114.)
• Communities and committees must allow a reasonable amount of time for members to discuss issues before voting electronically.

Community leaders who have questions about electronic voting may contact the STC office at 703-522-4114.

Call for Volunteers: New STC Web Site

Work will soon begin on a new STC Web site that maximizes usability, follows best practices in Web design, and incorporates new functions of use to STC members. This project is sponsored by STC President Paula Berger and Executive Director Susan Burton. The project leads are Bogo Vatovec, Web site committee manager, and Merrick Bechini in the STC office.

If you’re interested in volunteering in the area of user research, usability testing, information design and architecture, or requirements management, please consider getting involved. Those who participate can be expected to put in sixteen hours of effort per month for approximately twelve months.

To sign up as a volunteer for the STC Web site redesign, please send an e-mail with your skills, experience, and brief explanation of why you want to be a part of the Web redesign team to both Bogo Vatovec and Merrick Bechini.

Volunteers Needed for World Wide Web Consortium Activities

The Society for Technical Communication is pleased to be a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As a member of the W3C, STC is increasing the visibility of the technical communication profession by actively assisting in the development of Web standards. Your membership in STC means you can participate directly in W3C work groups helping to improve the readability and usability of specifications, best practice guides, and tutorials. Currently, there are openings to work on XHTML, Internationalization, SVG, Accessibility, and the Mobile Web. Other W3C projects continue to become available. Your contributions will provide you with experience in documentation with an extremely high profile that is recognized throughout the world.

You can also benefit by working closely with the people who have invented HTML, CSS, XML, and much more. Named credit is included on all completed work. This is a great opportunity to help move the Web forward, receive recognition for your talent, and increase STC’s standing in the world.

For further information, contact Joe Welinske, STC W3C manager. You must be a current member of STC to participate. We look forward to working with you in STC W3C activities.

Mailing Label Requests

As the STC competition season swings into gear, many chapters wish to obtain mailing labels for members of other chapters. The following procedures have been established to ensure that chapters can get the appropriate mailing labels.

Let’s say your chapter is holding a competition and you’d like to solicit entries from members of a nearby chapter that is not holding a competition. First you must ask the nearby chapter’s president if they have no objections to your chapter using their mailing labels.

Then send an e-mail to the STC membership department (cara@stc.org or membership@stc.org) copying the nearby chapter’s president. Simply request the labels be sent to you.

Please make sure that competitors know that a specific entry may be entered in only one chapter’s competition.