By the Executive Officers and Board of Directors
So you’re a Chapter Representative...
As a Chapter Representative to Hearthlight’s National Council, you are the primary point of contact (PoC) between your chapter’s members and the national organization. To best fulfill the duties that entails, it is important for you to consider communication your primary role.
Yes, you are the one who gets to vote on national issues, rules changes, and discipline matters. This is all very important. But even more important is that your are part of Hearthlight’s effort to be transparent to its members and the public eye.
How do you do this?
The first thing you need to do is decide what methods of communication will work best for you and your chapter. This is often a social media group, but it can be an email account, a phone/text number, or VoIP services. While it can and should be supplemented by opportunities to speak in person, it is important that you are available to members who might not be able to meet up with you easily in person.
You are going to need to force this issue. Some of us have experienced systems that took steps to remove the voices of the player base. People are not used to addressing their concerns in a constructive manner. I strongly recommend that, at least once a month, you publicly ask people if they have any concerns, ideas, or issues that you can help them address. - Sir Urdok
We must invite people into our process. We are building a culture of active participation in governance. This will take repetition, patience, and time. Hearthlight will learn as we do things and we will improve our game based on what we learn. But step one is to encourage people to participate.
How do I support my Chapter?
One of the biggest roles that you’ll have is to stay on your regional VP’s (Chapter Administrator) case regarding approving individual memberships to your chapter. All the systems in the world won’t matter if players can’t access them. To give them access, we need to process member applications. If your VP isn’t doing this, they’re doing their job poorly. Pressure them. It shouldn’t be hard, and it is not time consuming, to log-in and approve applications. This is something they should check weekly, possibly more often than that if there is a vote coming up.
Another important task is letting players know when there are chances to serve the national organization. We need lots of hands for lots of projects. Hearthlight is in a constant crunch for people who can commit to projects. This is the nature of an organization run by volunteers with real lives. The more help we get, the better. The more people we can draw into the pool of “willing and able to help” the better this organization will run.
What else do I do?
Remind people that they work with you to shape rules proposals.
Make sure people know how to contact Chapter Relations if they are made to feel unsafe or unwelcome.Tell players what the National Council is up to.
Remind players to vote on national issues.
Pass along announcements from Hearthlight.
Again, your most important role (outside of voting on behalf of your chapter) is to facilitate communications. If you need help doing that, please reach out to me, and I can talk you through it. Let’s lean in and help our players make this game even better than it already is.
Yours in Service,
Hearthlight Executive Officers and Board of Directors
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