ACT Strategic Retreat
(Updates from latest ACT meeting 5/29/13)
- Will take place Sunday August 4 and Monday August 5, 2013, in Atlanta, Georgia.
- ACT members & 1 delegate per working group will be supported to attend meeting.
- NPC members will be invited to send delegate at their expense.
- Meetings with members of Project South will be arranged.
Background Documentation/Decisions
(Retreat was approved by NPC May 10, 2013)
NPC approved plans for a strategic retreat for ACT members, working group delegates (1 per group), and key NPC/Allies to attend. Other NPC members can elect to send/fund their own delegates too.
- The meeting will take place in July after the July 15 site application deadline.
- We will do a National Consulta prior to retreat asking for input on the key questions to be discussed. This will inform and guide the retreat discussion and expand input/participation from other groups that have been part of USSF.
- NOTE: At ACT Meeting on 5/15/13, it was noted that we may not need additional information at this particular stage. While participation and consultation is valued, we have responses from previous NPC Consulta following Detroit and other NPC meetings and working groups that provide more than enough foundation for this strategy discussion. Time may be better spent assessing the existing documentation and what it says to the questions of the retreat than asking for input from people who haven't been following the work of NPC/ACT over the past year or so.
- Retreat will be supported with existing USSF funds, but efforts to raise funds elsewhere will be pursued.
- $5,000 has been allocated for this meeting. Additional fundraising around this meeting will seek to cover part of this cost.
PURPOSE:
Key aims of this retreat is for those most engaged in the recent effort to move the USSF process forward to:
- 1) Develop USSF Organizing/Coordinating Structure. Review our past experience with previous 2 USSFs and the operation of the NPC, including the conflicts and strains that have emerged during this time. The purpose of this review is to help us:
- a. Identify best and worst practices as we build models and structures to help us move forward. Specifically, we need these structures/models/practices to help us
- i. advance the aims of USSF-3 (i.e., supporting PMA process leading to a “social forum of a new type”) and
- ii. manage our workload better over the long-term so that national coordination work doesn’t come at the expense of people’s working group efforts and so we don’t generate the burnout and local stresses that we have experienced in the past.
- 2) Develop strategic plan for USSF -3. This will be based on timeframe and strategy paper developed by Road to USSF3 working group and ACT.
As part of #1:
- We need to have larger discussion of what is behind decisions of some NPC groups to step back and how this should inform our work moving forward. (OUTREACH: Can you provide a report on this question?)
For #2: How we build the road (Strategy paper for discussion at retreat-prepared by Road WG)
- PMAs/Educational process
- Strategic and tactical outcomes of USSF 3
- Develop detailed timetable for USSF3
- Coordination and workload
- Fundraising
[NOTE: Early ACT/NPC discussions of having a national consulta to guide the retreat were scrapped following ACT discussion on 5/15/13, where it was pointed out that we have results of a post Detroit NPC consulta and other feedback from NPC members that we should review/revisit before collecting new input. Given our limited capacities and the need to make better use of existing data, this approach was agreed.]