Up until this morning I found this an interesting, and I thought productive, discussion. But it now appears that we have not been involved in the discussion I thought we were having. I challenge that open enrollment is not viable. It might not be convenient. It might not be as easy as just consolidating some chapters and drawing new boundaries. But it is not unworkable. Hundreds of organizations are organized this way. I thought the objective was a restructuring that would better serve the membership and encourage both participation and growth. The strength of an organization is in having it's members feel a sense of belonging. "Allowing" someone to attend functions as a visiting member, where they have no voting rights, and cannot participate in the most conveniently located framing competition for them, along with their colleagues, does not foster a sense of membership. If someone consistently attends events at one chapter but never goes to those held by their "assigned" chapter, they are not going to be properly represented and the chapter business meetings will necessarily have to exclude these people. Given Randy's map, there are plenty of members who would benefit from selecting a chapter other than the one they will be assigned to.
It is hard enough to encourage participation in the framing competitions. I think there are several factors related to this and most of them should probably be discussed elsewhere in this forum. But I believe requiring someone to ship a contest entry to a chapter that is inconvenient, especially if they could take it to an event that is closer, and where they know the other framers, does nothing to stimulate participation.
My observation is that our priorities are mixed up. Instead of an organization of chapters that attract and support the members in a way that is meaningful to them, we seem to be more concerned with creating an organization of individuals and telling them where they have to vote and participate in our highlight event. We do this because creating an organizational structure that is convenient and beneficial to the members is "not viable".
I fail to understand why it makes any difference at all how an individual is assigned to a chapter as long as they belong to one. What difference does it make if a person belongs to a chapter because their address falls inside a box on a map or they checked a box on their application form? A chapter list is a chapter list. I don't see any finance restrictions or database management issues that are not manageable. I only see a "we've always done it this way" restriction. I think since we've always had geographically restricted chapters that seems to be the only perceived "viable" structure.
From what I'm reading on this forum there is very strong support, and a pretty strong rationale, for elective chapter membership. My question is, if the discussion was supposed to be limited to fine tuning of chapter boundaries why wasn't that stated up front?
Again, I apologize for this less than positive posting. But if we are serious about attracting more members and increasing activity, making a few chapter boundary changes ought not to be the biggest change we are willing to make.