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Meetings. You may think of them as necessary evils. They are the obstacles to be overcome and the pills to be swallowed before we can get on with the season. But meetings don’t have to be dreaded by your members. Done right, your meetings can be not only excellent learning and development tools, but enjoyable evenings of officiating fellowship. Get it together. Officials are busy folks. Meetings are typically held during a weekday evening. That means that your members have to hurry home from work, wolf down dinner and rushRead More

By Jerry Grunska Your association has asked you to evaluate a fellow official and you have been given an evaluator’s checklist. In many instances checklists offer only a limited perspective on how officials perform. The trouble is that listed characteristics are often too general and don’t reveal specific officiating actions (hustles, applies rules accurately) in a particular contest. There are a few things you can do to improve your method of evaluating. Use descriptions. For accurate particulars, an evaluation or observation report must describe, and doing that requires more thanRead More

It’s decision time. The owner wants $10 more a night for the room you rent for meetings. You want to get the latest program to help pull video plays for meetings and the place where you hold the banquet has raised its prices and eaten up your entire subsidy. You need to raise dues—but how?  Reach an agreement. Make sure your executive board buys in. Few things tend to antagonize the membership more than asking them for more money: “What? I’m making $10,000 a year from games you assign meRead More

By Tim Sloan One of the marks of any strong officials association is the favorable impression that its leaders project on their environment. A leader, in that context, is not necessarily any member of the executive board, but rather anyone who, through his or her actions and behavior, compels others to cooperate and lend support. Without leadership, any organization stands to become ineffective or irrelevant and risks going the way of the dodo. Alan Goldberger, officiating legal expert, will tell you, “It’s all about relationships,” and those are built basedRead More

The relationship between local officials associations and state associations is sometimes considered an oil-and-water thing: two elements that just don’t mix well. But it doesn’t have to be. Understanding the role of your state association, how it relates to your local officials association and how best to work within that framework can help usher in a new era of cooperation, effectiveness and growth that can make you and your association better. If your local association’s relationship with the state office could stand some improvement, it can be achieved through followingRead More

By Tim Sloan There are two reasons for merging with another association: because you really want to or because you really have to. Typically, those mergers take place when two (or more) associations that cover different sports in the same area realize it will be more cost effective and/or organizationally expedient to combine forces and resources: strength in numbers. It will also happen when two organizations that cover the same sport decide to get together. That can be dicey because there might have been a good reason for existing separatelyRead More

It’s Election Day. Three people are running for president and everyone knows it could be close. You want to make sure that nobody doubts the honesty of the outcome, so you decide to have a secret ballot. How do you do that right? Step 1: Make up ballots. After nominations have closed, print up enough ballots to serve everyone at the meeting. Using eight-10 ballots per 8.5 x 11 page, type the nominees’ names in alphabetical order and put a big box beside each name. Then run off enough copiesRead More

All officials have worked with someone whose favorite pastime seems to be whining and crying followed closely by griping and sighing. Those people seem to suck the enjoyment and fulfillment right out of the avocation like a vacuum cleaner, especially when they infect our hallowed officiating circles. As much as we would like to think otherwise, our organizations are just as susceptible to those “carriers” as any others. And they bring problems with them. Chronic complainers always seem to have an infinite supply of injustices. Their complaints can run theRead More

By Lawrence Tomei The mission of any officials association is to provide capable and competent officials while, at the same time, ensuring the highest level of integrity and good sportsmanship. To accomplish that objective, associations expend considerable time and talent during the offseason preparing for next year. During the season, the association must execute its planned agenda within an established financial plan to produce the highest quality meetings possible. Once the season is over, however, the real work is just beginning. The offseason is hardly a time to ignore your sport. OnRead More

If you’re ever curious how well your association would hold up to bitter division, ill-willed infighting, stubborn posturing and lack of consensus, try (re)designing the association logo. Nothing seems to invite more controversy than a simple task like that. Many associations have a logo and, nearly as often, encourage their members to wear it on their game uniforms or golf shirts. Therein lies the first difficulty, in many cases, because some officials — after they’ve stitched on the state badge and an American flag — are wary of adding anyRead More