First I want to recognize this as an extremely positive project and I appreciate the board taking a look at ways to support a more active organization.
Reading through the comments, it appears the main concern is creating a structure that organizes chapters around the most active members and leaders while maintaining reasonable geographic reach for other existing and new members. There do seem to be some geographic challenges with the proposed structure. For instance, in the proposed North Central Chapter, the majority of the members, and all of the officers, are located along the extreme eastern edge. From Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is the activity focal point for the chapter, to the Wisconsin border is only 18 miles, but it is 1000 miles to the western edge of the proposed chapter area. There are a number of Wisconsin Chapter members who are closer to the Twin Cities than they are to the larger cities in Wisconsin where activities take place. On the other hand, I imagine there are framers in the Quad Cities area of Iowa who are closer to activities offered by the Wisconsin Chapter. From comments I've seen, it appears this scenario plays out in many places. And it is impossible to avoid this when chapters are defined by dividing the map into sections, no matter where you place the boundaries.
The suggestions to allow members to select their chapter are not based as much on the distance of the member to a chapter border as the proximity to the closest activity center for a chapter. Hoping he will not mind being used as an example (because he has already commented here), George Strange would be far better off participating with the North Central Chapter than the Canada Chapter, even though he is technically in Canada. As a regular participant in North Central activities he has a stronger professional relationship to members in Minnesota. To require him to ship a framing competition entry to a far removed site in Canada instead of competing with the members he regularly meets with would be a disappointment to him and the North Central members who know him.
While PPFA is the parent organization, the value for most members (and prospective members if we are to grow again) is in what takes place at the chapter level. If a framer finds the activities of one chapter convenient and meaningful but she/he is technically located in a chapter area that is inconvenient, I don't think we are serving that person as well as we could. I would rather see a hub system instead of an area system, with the member selecting their chapter. I suppose if a prospective member in Billings, MT did not see a chapter hub close by they might be discouraged from membership, but they are going to quickly discover there are no North Central activities within 850 miles anyway.
Even with consolidation and some pretty long distances, I think focusing membership on the most convenient chapter hub, with the framer deciding in which chapter they will participate, is the best way to support the membership. Figuring out how to maintain chapter mailing lists is a minor issue once you get past the conceptual issue of organizing around activity centers instead of identifying vast stretches of "territory". So my recommendation would be to mark the map with chapter activity spots, make those the chapter hubs and name them appropriately, let members choose where they will get the most participatory benefit, and put a chapter checklist on the membership form. By the way, I wouldn't have a problem with a member changing to a different chapter at the time they renew if they see that a different chapter is doing things they like better than the chapter they had been a member of.
