Fellowship Administrative Management System:
Present Considerations

March 31, 2008

Dear Friends;

I've prepared an historical timeline of IT developments.  Please review this.  The entries are linked to supporting documents if you want more detail.  See "Fellowship Administrative Management System: Developmental Timeline and Related Documents" which may be found at http://www.fefadmin.org/database_development_history.html

At present there are two issues I'm asking you to consider -- the financial situation and project progress. 

The Financial Situation

I take full responsibility for precipitating the present pressing budgetary issues.  I knew up front that this project would cost considerably more than what had been budgeted.  However, my hope was that I could get it far enough along within budget to enable a demonstration to the Executive Committee of a product sufficiently developed to obtain extra-budgetary funding for completion.  Initially I included $7,500 in my 2008 budget request as a cushion for enabling me to pursue such a strategy.  When this amount was cut, I proceeded anyway. 

There were two other points of failure.  One was my failure to create a tighter contract for Alan.  The contract should have been better constructed --  more along the lines of the projection of time and costs which I prepared for you prior to our late March conference calls.  Instead, it was open ended, noting only an hourly amount to be paid for work that I was to specify.  I treated the contract as an afterthought rather than as the project management document it could have been. 

We still would have been ok had I monitored Alan's work more closely.  After our initial conferences I was extremely pleased with the level of competence and interest that he was bringing to the project, in addition to his willingness to bill us at a rate which was 50% of his normal rate.  I left it in his hands.  Once the project was rolling it avalanched and by the time I realized how seriously over budget it was going, it took sufficient time to bring it to a halt to cause an almost $7,000 over budget situation.  I apologize for this.  I chose to continue to a reasonable stopping point rather than simply call a halt to complex processes in motion. 

The real problem was my failure to implement appropriate managerial overcontrol, not sudden or unexpected surprises in the technical process itself.   The technical side has been very well thought out including time and cost estimates, as you can see by reviewing the documents in the timeline.

It is important to appreciate this fact.  At present there are concerns that the project will simply be out of control and result in continually spiraling costs.  The reality is that with adequate administrative attention the process can be managed and kept within acceptable parameters.  But this will require a greater degree of attention and involvement on the part of the Executive Committee and/or the officers than has been the case in the past.  I believe the critical factor has been lack of time rather than lack of interest.  We're all extremely busy -- which is another reason for making sure that our administrative procedures are as efficient and fail-safe as possible.   

In spite of running over budget, I am still at the point in the process where an initial product has been demonstrated and I am asking for an extra-budgetary allocation of funds to bring the project to completion.  The magnitude of the project and its significance for the entire organization should remove it from the normal committee budget process and secure financing by some other mechanism.

Project Progress

This project is at a major decision point.  If you will review the timeline you can appreciate the degree to which, over the past 10 years, the project has evolved to its present point.  You will also see that there have been a steady stream of progress reports, technical analyses, projections including time and costs, detailed strategic plans, reports on experiments and analyses of various approaches, at least five different committees tasked with looking into the matter for the Executive Committee, PowerPoints, diagrams, requests for administrative guidance, and pleas for additional technical staffing going back many years. Out of frustration the General Council even resorted to proposing a constitutional amendment to create an IT committee to oversee  this critical aspect of organizational development.  For more than five years Executive Committee conversations about these matters have tended to be speculative and circular, free from commitments or conclusions.

Over these years the Executive Committee has done an outstanding job of creating a sound financial foundation from which our work can proceed.  The group process has successfully carried our organization through some very difficult and scary legal waters.  But scant attention has been paid to the design and implementation of the kind of sound administrative structure upon which any continuing development -- expansion of services to the growing readership and dissemination efforts to a psychologically traumatized and spiritually hungry world -- increasingly will be dependent.  This has been compounded by a decision to sell the Wrightwood office and become a virtual organization while failing adequately to address the administrative implications of such a decision.  

We have continually been increasing the complexity of our virtual operations without creating adequate mechanisms for managing them.  In the past our administrative processes too often have consisted of, "Call John Hales, he'll do it"; "Call Steve, he'll know;" "Check with Paula;" "Ask Gloriann, she may have the information;"  "Call Harry;" -- the days when the work of an epochal revelation could depend on this management style are over.   As Steve said eight years ago in his comments to the 2000 TDA, "Our major organizations are facing the choice of reform or failure.  Our present system has exhausted the potential of its infancy."     

At present we do not have an administrative infrastructure capable of supporting any significant growth.  And our transition to an effective virtual organization is far from complete.  I'm asking you to do two things to help remedy this situation -- approve funding for full completion of the database project, and become more involved in addressing the administrative imperatives of successful transition to being an effective virtual organization with a viable developmental trajectory.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a financial advisor a number of years ago. He told me to consider the difference between being rich and being wealthy.  Being rich, he said, involved having lots of money.  Being wealthy on the other hand, he said, involves having the means to create richness in the future. In a period of economic uncertainty, having a mechanism in place which can be used to generate additional funds is likely to be of much greater value than simply having cash reserves; with the proper tools, additional funds can be generated relative to any future economic situation.  The value of cash reserves can change significantly during periods of economic turbulence.  

Completing the database project will provide us with the means of fostering increased membership, more effective fund raising, less administrative time spent on maintenance, more talent directed toward creative pursuit of our mission, reduction of the need for increased paid staff, increase in the ability easily to involve volunteers in administrative work, enhanced services and support enabling the fuller mobilization of Societies and other constituent organizations, more effective record keeping, reliable access to critical organizational documents, elimination of duplication of effort, increased accuracy of data input, ability to support geographically dispersed leadership and social organization, and -- perhaps most importantly -- a transcendence of institutional mediocrity and the establishment of service leadership as an organization devoted to the work of the fifth epochal revelation.  Can you think of a better way to attract volunteers and financial support than a demonstration of commitment, competence, and leadership in the emerging world of web-driven social evolution?    

Alan Goodman has appeared on the scene at a very critical juncture.  In Alan we have a highly skilled professional who is also dedicated to the work of the revelation; who is willing to work with us at a greatly reduce billing rate, and who is already deeply involved in the project.  I'm asking you again to make a commitment to the completion of this project and to authorize the necessary funding without asking committee chairs to trash their budgets.  There are important reasons why we should keep the project moving forward.  If yet another year is spent in more discussions and committees, the project will need to be started anew; our data will be in much worse shape than it is today, costs will be far higher, and we will be greatly increasing the risk of administrative breakdown in the meantime.

Review the timeline I've provided.  It is not necessary to read the linked documents unless you want further information.  If there are serious questions or concerns, instead of engaging in still more internal circular discussions, take advantage of interested individuals who are professionally qualified to provide opinions.  Susan Cook, Tim Hobbs, Robert Burns, and Alan Goodman are experienced business and database professionals.  Tim, Alan, and Robert provided invaluable guidance during our September 2007 weekend meeting in Denver.

I believe it is a time and a situation for bold, forward looking decision making.  As The Urantia Book notes, "The acts are ours, the consequences God's."

Respectfully submitted,

David Kantor