Not that it matters, but I too am a life member. As you can tell, there is an air of displeasure with the NRA. I have read over your posts a few times, thank you for your cancer work. I have witnessed three people die from cancer in less than a year, one just last week.

Can you tell us what will change from the past NRA? What improvements will you attempt to make? How will you try and avoid the errors of the past? I know that you alone cannot change everything,

Thanks for answering my questions about legislative involvement. Even though you mention prior work that led to current rulings, it does seem like the NRA is absent recently with other orgs on the winning side of recent rulings.
The owner of Rare Breed claims he went with NAGR since the NRA would not help (at least to the best of my recollection). Maybe that is true, maybe not, maybe my memory is wrong. But I would like to see the NRA involved in all the current federal legislative action until the NFA is repealed.

@DonSaba sorry to be this guy, but you are seeking a position where you will be responsible for making financial decisions With other people’s money:

Any papers etc with your name on it?

I couldn’t find any. Admittedly, I do not have access to pub med right now.

Couldn’t find anything referring to that at all.

Thanks for your willingness to serve.

I have a couple of questions:
What to you think about the recent reorganization of the NRA’s 11 member executive committee; in what specific ways does it enhance or threaten accountability to the members and/or fidelity to the NRA’s mission?

Jeff Knox appears to support efforts to reduce the board by a total of 30 seats over a three year period; a 10 seat reduction per year over three years. While there’s a good chance I’m wrong about this it seems that the larger board in the past made it easier for leadership to be unresponsive to members and to keep semi active board members on the board. It seems to me that a board of 46 plus the executive committee would be sufficient to supply the expertise necessary. You appear to be at odds with any reduction. Why? If the current size of the board continues, how would you insure that those on the board are active, contributing members responsive to member concerns?

Thanks,
Silent

quote:

Originally posted by Silent:
Thanks for your willingness to serve.

I have a couple of questions:
What to you think about the recent reorganization of the NRA’s 11 member executive committee; in what specific ways does it enhance or threaten accountability to the members and/or fidelity to the NRA’s mission?

Jeff Knox appears to support efforts to reduce the board by a total of 30 seats over a three year period; a 10 seat reduction per year over three years. While there’s a good chance I’m wrong about this it seems that the larger board in the past made it easier for leadership to be unresponsive to members and to keep semi active board members on the board. It seems to me that a board of 46 plus the executive committee would be sufficient to supply the expertise necessary. You appear to be at odds with any reduction. Why? If the current size of the board continues, how would you insure that those on the board are active, contributing members responsive to member concerns?

Thanks,
Silent

Regarding your question about the Executive Committee:

The Previous Executive Committee consisted of:

The President and the two Vice Presidents plus twenty Board members directly elected by the Board, for a total of 23 members.

The Reorganized Executive Committee consists of:

The President, the two Vice Presidents, the four chairs of the Finance, Audit, Legal Affairs, and Membership Committees, each appointed by the President, and four additional Board members elected directly by the Board, for a total of 11 members.

Which do you think has more accountability to the membership?

Regarding your questions about the size of the Board:

The failings of leadership rest solidly on the shoulders of leadership. The size of the board cannot be used as an excuse for leaders to escape their responsibilities.

As I mentioned in my original post, the NRA Board is far more than a typical board of directors—it operates as a mini-legislature, overseeing and participating in more than forty essential program areas that serve the NRA and our members.

Currently, in order to fulfill the need for additional expertise on committees, beyond that provided by the 76 member board, the NRA President had to appoint over one hundred additional committee members to serve on NRA committees. So clearly, the current the size of the board is not sufficient to supply all the expertise needed and reducing the size of the board would seem to be counterproductive.

Currently, incumbent candidates for the board must meet attendance requirements in order to be renominated for election. Furthermore, the Nominating Committee's responsibility is to choose candidates for the board who will be active contributing members.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
Not that it matters, but I too am a life member. As you can tell, there is an air of displeasure with the NRA. I have read over your posts a few times, thank you for your cancer work. I have witnessed three people die from cancer in less than a year, one just last week.

Can you tell us what will change from the past NRA? What improvements will you attempt to make? How will you try and avoid the errors of the past? I know that you alone cannot change everything,

Thanks for answering my questions about legislative involvement. Even though you mention prior work that led to current rulings, it does seem like the NRA is absent recently with other orgs on the winning side of recent rulings.
The owner of Rare Breed claims he went with NAGR since the NRA would not help (at least to the best of my recollection). Maybe that is true, maybe not, maybe my memory is wrong. But I would like to see the NRA involved in all the current federal legislative action until the NFA is repealed.

I believe we need to provide the members with much more information about the NRA Board and how it oversees NRA's many vitally important programs and how these programs benefit the members. This information can be provided online, in emails and in our print publications.

We need to update our data processing capabilities, taking advantage of the ongoing advances in computer technology, so that we can better communicate with our members and with prospective members.

We will also need a more vigorous public relations effort to regularly show the public how it benefits from NRA programs.

Regarding avoiding the errors of the past, the Board has put in place extensive protections against any financial improprieties through thorough financial auditing. We have also instituted a robust whistleblower protection program. All of these reforms were approved by the Judge in his Final Judgement in the New York case.

The deadline to sign this petition is October 13th

If you would like to sign my petition to place my name on the ballot for the NRA Board of Directors election, please be aware that the deadline for you to sign is Tuesday, October 13th.

Sign the petition at NRAPetition.com

(Signing takes less than a minute if you have your NRA membership number handy. Get your NRA Member ID number from your membership card or from the top right side of your NRA magazine mailing label. Or you can call NRA at 1-800-672-3888 on weekdays from 9 AM to 9 PM Eastern Time and they will look up your membership number)

Thank you for your support, your trust, and your commitment to defending our freedom together!

Don Saba
NRA Board Member

quote:

Originally posted by DonSaba:
Regarding your concerns about NRA's finances, the financial mismanagement that occurred will not be allowed to be repeated. The individuals involved have been held accountable and will never cross NRA's threshold again. There are many financial safeguards that NRA put in place that were approved by the Court, including the detailed yearly audit that you mentioned. At the board meeting in September the entire board reviewed the latest financial reporting documents and heard the report of the NRA Audit Committee. There were no financial irregularities reported.

I'm a NRA Endowment life member and continue to be disappointed. For example, I dissected their supposedly reformed financial report and the NRA continues to be poorly run with ~41% of their budget going towards their supposed core missions and objectives. The big 3 in this area are:

~11% goes toward Firearm Education and Training. Instructor certs (i.e. the OP's query) is under this umbrella.

~8% goes towards grants (shooting clubs, youth programs, etc)

~6% goes to NRA-ILA. They have abdicated gun rights to numerous other groups (GOA, FPC, SAF, and state organizations such as TSRA), and is now more of an 8-lb newborn gorilla instead of the 800-lb gorilla it used to be.

The above pales in comparison their non-core business budget with the big 3 being:

~21% being legal expenses

~18% being administrative

~16% being member communications

quote:

Originally posted by DonSaba:
The size of the board cannot be used as an excuse for leaders to escape their responsibilities.

There was a study a few years ago that concluded the ideal number of directors of a corporation or non-profit is 7 and every additional board member decreases decision making by 10%. The NRA executives can do whatever they please since it's so difficult to get a majority of 76 people to align, and I'd suggest this is the primary reason the board was set-up to be that size so the executives can do whatever they want.

I continue to hold my nose and vote for new members of the bloated social club that will have slim to no ability to reign in the NRA's executives.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

I am a current member of GOA and a former member of the NRA. The NRA is a once good organization that transformed into a bloated organization, only concerned with raising money for itself and its officers. It paid lip service to the gun rights cause only to stab gun owners in the back. Frankly, you and the rest of the NRA can kiss my ass.

I find it quite interesting that you joined our forum with the sole self-serving intent of supporting your candidacy to serve on the board of the NRA

Then when asked honest questions about the organization you want to lead, you resorted to political talking points.

You also failed to actually do any research about how the membership of this forum felt about the direction of the organization you want to lead.

Your initial post was good and I think you will find the membership of this forum agrees with all of the good the NRA "wants" to do, but the reality of what the NRA has actually done over the past 5-10 years does not lead to a lot of trust in the organization. You are a board member now, tell us what you have already done, how it has impacted the organization and gun owners. Show us some receipts for your efforts and gaining our support for your candidacy will be much easier.