Membership Drop in the USA
Jan 06, 2011 06:18 PM
by MKR
In one of the bulletins issued at the time of recent Adyar convention was
the information about activities in various sections. What caught my eye was
the fact that the membership in the USA has dropped by 250. What is
surprising is that no word about its significance and what are the plans to
address the declining membership. Ever since Dora Kunzâ time, the
memberships has been declining every year despite leadership from well known
theosophists and scholars, etc.
No one can find the excuse that lack of funds contributed to the continuing
decline. As is typical, this issue should be addressed openly with full
transparency of operations. You need the help of current members to bring in
new members. Also there are sufficient funds to make a concerted effort to
boost membership, especially when TSA can spend $120K for outside
accountants (this in spite of having an in-house accounting department and
well paid accountants) as shown in the last available 990 Tax Return.
The credibility and trust in the leadership, in the opinion of many members,
is quite low especially after the intense activities surrounding the
election and its aftermath, especially the ill fated ultra secret attempt to
disenfranchise all of us in the election of International President.
The continued non-transparency of the leadership is another major stumbling
block in restoring high credibility and trust. For example, everyone is in
the dark about what was the agenda in the last GC meeting and what were the
decisions taken. We do not have to wait for months and months to find out
some pieces of unimportant crumbs.
The GC members can speak out and report to their members immediately by
distributing a special bulletin through Internet. I hope there is no secret
pledge which prevents GC members from speaking out about what happened in
the GC meeting.
The current climate has to be improved by both full transparency and further
interaction of the leaders with the membership. These are bound to help
theosophy and TS.
MKR
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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