The Language Teacher
November 2000

JALT as a Movable Feast

Joe Tomei

National Director of Membership


Though it's always difficult to prove cause and effect, I would suggest that the blossoming of the Opinions and Perspectives columns has gone some distance in making the JALT EXBO mailing list much calmer, in large part because of thoughtful pieces by Tim Knowles, Jim Swan and most recently, Charles Jannuzi. I'd like to take up Jannuzi's discussion of a menu membership because I feel that there is a dimension lacking in his discussion, but I hope that I can equal the thoughtfulness of the previous pieces.


I have corresponded with Charles both privately and on EXBO and expressed my appreciation and support for many of his ideas, even though, on some things, we disagree quite strongly. I have tried to incorporate some of his ideas in positions that I have presented, and I remain sincerely disappointed that he has not been a part of JALT since the beginning of this year, though he continues to do a yeoman's service for JALT as a non-JALT member in the FL Literacy SIG.


To recap, responding to Jim Swan's suggestion that 'the general consensus [on the membership option] seems to be that it would be very difficult to implement this proposal without substantial risks to chapters, or to other JALT institutions, such as JALT publications', Jannuzi argues that a menu option represents a way forward for JALT as an organization. But, while I agree with some of the points he makes, I feel that he is wrong on the menu option for reasons which I will try to outline.


The first reason that I think a menu option is problematic is because it represents the 'tyranny of the majority' that may not actually exist. As an example, the JALT Journal is often claimed to be a financial drain on the organization that should therefore be jettisoned. However, a number of people, people who devote significant volunteer time and effort to many other facets of the organization, feel that any academic organization worth its salt has to have a research publication with high standards, even if it may not appeal to the majority of the membership. Given JALT's diversity, this becomes a huge problem. Individual parts of JALT could disappear, and leading members not participate, thus impinging on other parts of the organization. Tim Knowles pointed out that the chapter system of JALT is rarely found in professional organizations and is, in his words, 'well worth preserving', yet certainly chapter meetings are not attended by a majority of the members. Other JALT members have argued, including Jannuzi, that a monthly TLT represents an excessive commitment on the part of JALT. Is the idea that a popularity contest, with the winner surviving and the losers told that they just didn't appeal to the membership really the way that we want to decide what JALT should or should not be? Jannuzi suggests that 'We [the JALT leadership?] don't really care what the membership thinks, at least not to the extent of finding out by letting them have some say in the matter.' But the way of finding out would not be through discussion, but through seeing who pays for what. I'm generally an optimistic person, but a year as a National Officer has led me to believe that we would see arguments within JALT that would make previous ones look like lovefests. And being a current part of that 'leadership' of JALT (a phrase which implies a unity of purpose that is difficult to discern), one thing I know we do share is the goal of wanting to broker compromises. To hand the membership a list that they check off, like a Chinese menu, is not leadership, it's the abdication of leadership.


The second reason that the menu option is problematic is that it would set unbreakable financial parameters on the parts of the organization. Some might say that this is just what JALT needs, but consider for a moment the disposition of chapters in Jannuzi's version of a menu option plan. He suggests that 5,000 yen be the basic membership to JALT, and an additional 2,500 yen would allow one to be listed in a chapter or a SIG. Many chapter representatives (who comprise the bulk of the Executive Board, I should note) have given the minimum figure to run a chapter as 180,000 yen. For a chapter to be viable, it would need 72 members, a figure which is greater than the majority of currently constituted chapters. Since the Executive Board has historically been composed of representatives of chapters, we would have to devise a completely new way of representation.
Furthermore, this arrangement would be very tenuous. As I noted, Jannuzi does a huge amount of work for the FLL SIG. If he were to leave, it is not certain that there would be a person to assume the workload that he does. What happens to those SIG members? Would we see in the ebb and flow of groups represented the vagaries of finding people willing to devote the time and effort to these groups?


What is lost in all these discussions is the fact that JALT 'lost its way' not because of a drop in membership, but because we didn't know how good we had it. (In fairness to us, the rest of Japan also labored under the same illusion.) Seven or eight years ago, there was a lottery system for allocating ads in the TLT(!) and there was never any question that we would turn a large profit on the conference. Now, we find associate members merging and reducing advertising budgets, people counting their yen and having to make hard decisions about attending not only conferences, but also how much time and effort they can put into JALT. As computers drop in price, associate members can develop their own mailing list databases, making the number of members in JALT irrelevant. Many of those same associate members have begun putting on their own events where they can avoid competing with other publishers and sell direct to a captive audience, reducing the revenue at our annual conference.


In all this, revenue from individual memberships has not declined. At our peak, we had 4,000 members paying 7,000 yen each, which was 28 million yen a year. We now have about 2,900 paying an average of 9,500 yen (factoring in group and student memberships), which is 27.5 million. It's clear that any rise in membership accomplished by a menu plan of reduced prices would leave us with less revenue than we have now that would only be offset by losing parts of JALT. A basic membership in a National JALT may leave us financially solvent with nothing to spend the money on.


The way out, as I see it, is decentralizing JALT and developing multiple networks. We see this trend in mini-conferences co-sponsored by SIGs and urban chapters. We can also see this in presentation tours which lower costs to chapters but enhance chapter meetings. I have suggested (following Jannuzi) that we try to fold in one SIG membership into the cost of a membership in order to increase the critical mass of those SIGs, but SIGs are hesitant without some guarantee that they would recoup the monies lost. However, we certainly can't undertake something like this by fiat. The new reserve scheme, which sets aside money for JALT groups to submit proposals for projects that would either bring in new members or meet the needs of current ones is one way of trying to work around this, but we can't simply conjure that money out of thin air. Many people who work on the National level are trying to squeeze as much blood out of the stone as possible by not accepting conference or membership reimbursement as well as looking for new ways to finance JALT. We are doing this so that we can pump this money back into JALT, not so that we can argue over where the money should go.


But thinking that it is only people working on the national level who can or should do something about JALT is just like thinking that people on the national level need to come up with a menu membership so that everyone can choose what they want. It's important to realize that what JALT needs most are people willing to take on a project and see it through. To return to my title, JALT is a movable feast, and the energy and excitement of JALT derive not from balanced budgets and making sure that JALT is furnishing exactly what its members want at a price that they are willing to pay, but in providing an outlet for the expertise and volunteer energy that our members have.

Below is a short list of things that you can do to help JALT.

If you have any questions about these suggestions or if you want to get involved, please contact me at <memchair@jalt.org>. I'd love to hear from you.


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