Stuck in Committee

This past weekend, someone asked me about the various committees that we have at the state level and how some of them work and operate. What I found particularly interesting is that some of them seem unknown to our general membership and others are not what they used to be, yet we continue to perpetuate them, for what reason I am not certain. One of the areas of apparently constant confusion are the committees with lots of area people who don't seem to do anything. There was a time, back before e-mail and the Internet and a lot of changes when those committee area people had a lot to do, such as processing applications and giving fund raising speeches in the Chapters in their area. But for many of these committees, the processing function has been centralized, either in the Chairman or in one of our statewide programs, and the visiting aspect has disappeared. What puzzles me is that even though the committee doesn't do anything any more, people don't want to get rid of it. It seems to me that either we have to redefine duties for these committees to give them some useful reason to exist, or let them go. There was some legislation at one point to cut down some of these, but for some inexplicable reason, it didn't pass at Grand Chapter. So the members must feel that these committees still have work to do and that is great, if only the people who voted no on cutting down the committee sizes would let us know what that work is supposed to be. The topic came to mind as I was looking through my Mighty Binder of All Volunteers for potential Co-Chairs for about a dozen committees which I am supposed to line up between now and July. For some of our committees, there is a Chair and a C0-Chair, with the idea that the Co-Chair learns about the job the year before they are the Chair. It is a great system so long as the Chair does their job of training up the Co-Chair. We have some committees that are fabulous at passing this information on. But to do that, I have to find the proposed Co-Chairs this year, so they can be appointed Co-Chair for 2012 and then serve as Chair in 2013. To help me do this, I have inherited the Mighty Binder, which has all the member volunteer resumes that have been turned in to Grand Chapter since 2007. It used to have resumes that were older in it, but I decided to remove anything that was older than 2007 because they were just too far out of date to be useful. I mean, seriously, I was looking through all the sheets and some of the people had passed away. Now I am not prejudiced in favor of the living or anything, but it is harder to drive a car or send e-mail from beyond the grave. However, if any of the members who have passed away want a committee appointment, I hope they send me an e-mail or give me a call. When I regain consciousness, I will be sure to appoint them to whatever committee they want. :-) Anyway, after weeding out the oldest sheets, I have in this binder all these resumes that people sent in indicating that they want to help and I also have all the ones for people who were recommended by Deputies last year and starting into this year. It is a whopping big binder! I mean five inches thick type big! Thirty foot Twinkie big! It came to me from my fraternal mom, who got it from hers and so on, and when I am done with all my appointments, I will pass it on to my Grand Marshal so that she can start collecting names and sheets for when it is her turn to fill committees. I wonder if the other lines have these also? It sure is coming in handy. I guess it is the sort of thing one could always start and then start passing on. Anyway, I have a bit longer to wait before I ask anyone to do anything, to give those ahead of me a chance to finish their committees and then I have to line up these dozen or so people. I am hoping to have Co-Chairs that have been on the committee before, but I also hope next year to have at least a third or so of the committee people I choose be new people because I think it is important to have a nice mix of those who have done it and those who are new. We'll see how it goes. Next weekend, I am in Redding and Healdsburg.