From the Desk of Marty Schaffel: Heart Felt Thanks

I would like to take an opportunity to say thank you to the many people who have come forward recently and volunteered to help in any way they can. I have been overwhelmed by the passion, so many of you have exuded about making our association the best it can be. How did this happen?

When I was first elected to the board two years ago, one thing was abundantly clear to me. We can do a better job of communicating with our membership. I knew we had some very valuable information we needed to get out about what ASHA was doing. But we were not getting this out. And as a result, misinformation was filling the vacuum of information. And our membership seemed to feel confused and uninformed.

It became very clear to me that we needed a communications plan — a roadmap for what needed to be communicated and how it would get done. With the creation of our Communications Committee and its exceptional team of volunteers, we have done this. A formal plan was created, and we have been following this “roadmap” for the past couple of months. The committee meets every week to determine what needs to be said. We agreed that this effort had to be religiously adhered to so we could do a better job keeping our members informed. The results have been very notable. So many of you have responded by volunteering your valuable time to help make a difference. And you have!

So thank you very much for responding to the call and volunteering. You genuinely have already made a difference.

 Marty Schaffel, ASHA Interim President