An e-mail from a USPA member:

“Mr. Furnari:

Here is a little fuel for your blog:  There has not been a quorum at a General Membership meeting in the last six years.  Thus, there has been NO general membership business conducted in that period.

Do you think that this is a problem?  If so, how do you think that it should be addressed?

Blue Skies!

Jim McGraw B-30893″
And my reply:

I do think it is a problem, but I’m not quite sure how to handle it.

There has not been a been a quorum because 10% of the membership has not shown up. That 10% totals somewhere around 3100 people. I think I could count 35 to 45 at the last GMM. Its a shame.

So how does this get fixed? There has been talk about attendance by proxy, however last time that was tried, it became a political squabble, and overall participation was appathetic. Reducing the number for quorum might work, but that entails changing a constitutional bylaw of the organization and we’ve got to have a quorum (10%) through attendance or proxy to change the bylaws.

I don’t know if we’ll ever reach quorum again, I would not mind trying the quorum by proxy again, but there is a lot of resistance to that on the current BOD. I would suggest that if the operations of the USPA were more accessible to more of it’s members, then the interest to do something about the GMM might develop. I am in favor of having Board Meetings at places/times much more convenient to member attendance.

Perhaps it’s time to break the GMM out and hold it durring a major skydiving event? Or look at the possibility of online attendance?