We were putting our heads together here at WakeUpNCRA and we figured out that the NCRA leadership has never deviated from their grand strategic plan of making NCRA an umbrella organization for recorders, voicewriters and stenographers (“stenos” as we’re referred to in the secret clique), even though membership has time and again stated that we want NCRA to be an organization “serving” stenographers only!

These are some of the things that we came up with:

1. During the golden era, the executive director/CEO held important meetings with a third-party facilitator so that he could put forward his goals and plans into action, but it looked like all the “great ideas” of making NCRA an umbrella association came from the board members themselves.
2. The board has a pattern over the years of refusing to go to membership for solutions, but instead implementing their own plans through the cliques that formed on the board.  If you made it onto the board and agreed to “go along to get along” (membership be damned!), you became a member of their secret society.  Just like a secret illuminati.
3. Ah, reduce membership from 35,000 down to under 12,000 so that they have the ability to say that NCRA will completely die if we don’t credential recorders and voicewriters.
4. They sold the paid-for building for $5 million without letting membership know until the board had to disclose it at a business meeting attended by around 80 members, not giving access to the meeting by streaming for all members to see.  AND, we’re sure that the new NCRA headquarters is in Class-A office space in one of the highest rent districts in the USA.  They’re blowing through the money as fast as wind in a Category-5 hurricane.  They’re making NCRA broke.  We will soon hear that they need to credential recorders and voicewriters just to stay in business – while putting the rest of us out of business. *
5. The board discourages participation in leadership.  They keep mostly sheep on the board.  The sheep don’t buck the system because if they do they won’t be able to go “up” to the cool girls’ table.  The one or two shepherds keep the grand strategic plan of the umbrella association alive.  Do a little research and figure out who nominated the most sheep (and maybe one shepherd) onto the board, including the current vice president (who is getting a ton of press through NCRA, after being nominated for and receiving the FAPR, news releases for becoming VP, etc.) over the past few years.  It’s the grand poo-bah of shepherds nominating all of those sheep. Baaaaaaaa …
6. Ah, yes, don’t forget the “board rules” that allow your fellow board members the ability to throw you off the board if you talk to membership about what happened during a meeting.  The “secret handshake” makes everybody feel so special.
7. Credentialing electronic recorders and voicewriters with NCRA’s coveted credentials fits the personal business model of the rumored member of NCRA vying for the Executive Director position.**
8. In our opinions, bestowing the Distinguished Service Award by the clique to the clique cheapens the significance that it gives to those who truly deserve it.

Wake Up, NCRA!!!
 Frank N. Sense

P.S. Please forward this post to other members of NCRA in your contacts list so that they can see how they are being screwed, too.

* We’re all still waiting for a full accounting from the sale of the building.  Maybe next year’s president will have the guts to give membership a full disclosure. We are ENTITLED! to a who, what, where, when and how.

** If the board is not very careful about who is given the job of the Executive Director of NCRA, they will see membership dwindle even more than after the famous umbrella speech of 2007.  But please read No. 3, again.