Updates from the 2018 Board Retreat

Greetings from the Consortium Board!

We hope that this message finds members enjoying the summer and recharging from a busy school year. We have a lot of updates and exciting changes to share with you! Typically, our first communication to membership for the academic year is a recap of our summer institute and executive board retreat. This year we did not hold a summer institute because we needed the time to follow up on the work of our consultants, Dr. Kai Green and Micah Hobbes Frazier. At this retreat, we worked on the process of creating a new board structure and guiding documents based on their recommendations.

The message that follows will outline the updates on initiatives that the board is taking on to support our mission and vision.

1. Centering our commitment to racial justice
2. Strategic organizational planning and sustainability
3. Fiscal structure

We welcome membership feedback: If after reading over these updates, you would like to provide your thoughts and feedback to the Board, please share with us via this online form: https://goo.gl/forms/2nx4PnEQYdzcK4zo1. 

Board Initiatives

This year’s board retreat took place from July 13-16 at Columbia University and New York University in New York City. The focus of this retreat was to continue to apply the organization’s new mission and vision to the needs and goals of the Consortium. The following initiatives were identified as priorities and will guide the work of the board over the next year.

Centering Our Commitment to Racial Justice

• The Consortium Board will be moving forward to ensure the future composition of the board as at least 60% people of color and no more than 40% people who identify as white, with a commitment to reach this target on or before 2020
• Consortium Community Commitments and Guidelines
• This document provides expectations for the Consortium leadership and what it means to be a member of the organization
• The commitments and the guidelines in this document will be integrated into the Consortium membership registration and renewal process
• Expanding our membership to intentionally include individuals who work in campus cultural centers. The Consortium’s membership is open to anyone who is committed to queer and trans liberation work in the higher education context.
• Continuing to expand outreach and support for our QTIPOC members by creating ongoing opportunities to engage via webinars, social media, and creating sustainable pathways that focus on empowerment and healing.
• Holding whiteness accountable: In an effort to provide white members with more opportunities to engage in the work of racial justice, the board will continue to create resources including a living syllabus, webinars, and social media engagement.

Strategic Organizational Planning

• We are restructuring the Consortium Executive Board to a more sustainable model that can better serve the needs of the organization and membership. The changes below are in progress and will launch in January 2019:
• The new board structure will consist of 10 elected members.
• The new board structure will maintain a collaborative leadership model with two coordinators: an Internal Coordinator and an External Coordinator.
• The remaining 8 members of leadership will be members of either the organizational operations collective (OOC) or the membership engagement collective (MEC). These collectives are designed as collaborative work teams that will carry out the day-to-day functions of the organization as a whole. The Internal Coordinator will facilitate the organizational operations collective and the External Coordinator will facilitate the membership engagement collective.
• For more information about the restructured board roles and the work of each collective, please review the new Consortium Guiding Document: Board Structure.
• The length of executive board service terms will be increased from two years to four years in order to allow for better role transition, institutional memory, and pipeline/pathway support. This change is  based on a recommendations from the consultants.
• The election process has changed slightly to support the new board structure. More information about the election process can be found in the new Consortium Guiding Document: Elections.
• Creation of the Consortium Accountability Team (CAT) as a way to hold the Executive Board of the Consortium accountable in the following ways (a structure document for the CAT will be forthcoming shortly):
• Enactment of racial justice practice
• Transparency in finances and decision-making

Fiscal Structure

We are restructuring our budget to accommodate three primary fiscal goals:

• Based on our consultants’ recommendations, we will be compensating board members with stipends and region representatives with honoraria, beginning with the next board cycle (voted in to begin March 2019). See more on this in our Consortium Guiding Document: Stipends & Honoraria.
• Compensating members who perform service (webinars, grant support, some committee work, etc) for the Consortium with honoraria
• Implementing a membership fee change to apply to renewals occuring any time after January 1, 2019
• Each membership block includes a discount of one or more free memberships
• Sliding scale and free memberships are always available via [email protected]

For additional context on our funds, budget process, and policies, please review ourFiscal Transparency Page under the About Us tab when you log into the website. This page is a resource for members to follow the financial policies and practices of the Consortium. We want to be accountable to members and make our financial processes as transparent as possible.

Thank You

We are grateful to be able to spend part of the summer focusing on this work. One of the major advantages of the summer retreat is that it allows our board to be together in person. For most of the year, we are physically far apart, connecting only through technology. Being together for the retreat means that we can set expectations and goals, and work in community.

To find your current board members, please go to:
http://www.lgbtcampus.org/executive-board

To find your current regional representatives, please go to:
http://www.lgbtcampus.org/regions

Thank you for everything you do for your students, our profession, and the Consortium community!

In solidarity,
​Consortium Executive Board

Look for announcements coming soon regarding Creating Change 2019, including Consortium awards. We will continue to create both educational and social opportunities to engage and create community!