Day 3 NRA Board Committee Meetings - various
Continued Inside out thinking, stovepipes and silos oh my!
Day 3 was a reprise of Day 2 reinforcing the inside-out thinking, stovepipes, and silos The details of today’s meetings are below.
The highlight is clarity on the NRA Board election timeline. Candidate biographies will be in the February issue of the magazines and they should start shipping in a week. The ballots for the Board will be in the March magazines which will be out in another month.
It is well past time for the NRA to shift from a defensive mindset to an offensive mindset. We need new blood on the board that protects our members’ rights by advancing them, not just defending them.
I ask for your support when the ballot for the NRA Board election comes in the next issue of your NRA magazine. Please vote ONLY for Frank C Tait. Jeff Knox has a great article on bullet voting.
I am the only candidate on the ballot from a petition of the members and committed to being a true independent director providing accountability and transparency to NRA members.
I also ask that you share this message and ask your fellow NRA members to support my candidacy by only voting for board candidates that are committed to reforming the NRA.
For those that want the details from today -
The Finance Committee was all executive session (as expected).
The Women’s Policies Committee was chaired by Carol Frampton with Judi White, Janet Nyce, and Carrie Lightfoot. This committee manages the awarding of 2 scholarship programs, The Janet E Bray memorial scholarship, and the Women’s Wildlife Management Conservation scholarship. The funding for these scholarships is going to move to the NRA Foundation, that way donations in support of these scholarships will be tax-deductible.
The Public Affairs Committee was chaired by Scott Bach with Carolyn Meadows, Ronnie Barrett, Ken Blackwell, Sandy Froman, and Kane Robinson. The presentations were all management updates to the committee. The sense is that the NRA needs to get back in the game and promote itself. They discussed starting to do Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They also discussed that the NRA will be an early adopter of new social media platforms (like GETTR). They noted that the fastest-growing demographic of new gun owners are suburban women.
One interesting item for instructors, Joe DeBergalis said that for NRA classes offered by Instructors, they are emailing NRA contacts that are local to where that class will be held.
Doug Hamlin, head of NRA publications noted that the expected move to online hasn’t happened and that print remains strong, He provided an update on circulation:
Print circulation 3,528,455
Web circulation 321,237
E-newsletters 1,150,141 (all opt in) 33% open rate
Newsletters (members) 1,493,918 30% open rate
Facebook 3,769,754
Twitter 416,512
Youtube 116,477
The NRA Rifleman magazine is the 19th largest magazine circulation in the US and will have its 100th anniversary in 2023. American Hunter has the largest circulation in the world and will have its 50th anniversary in 2023.
They also highlighted the 4th Annual Women’s Pistol Project from October 2021 in Houston. The video editors would benefit from having Education and Training review the shots they used to show firearm handling.
They also discussed participation in the upcoming SHOT Show, GAOS, and the NRA annual meeting conventions.
The Publication Policies Committee was mostly a rehash of Doug Hamlin’s presentation to the Public Affairs Committee and I had to leave early.
The NRA Board meeting is tomorrow and I’ll have updates after I get back home.