Message from the President

November 8, 2023

When I ran for board President as part of the ENHANCE (Ethicists, Non-theists, & Humanists Aligned for New Community Engagement) team, I dedicated myself to a collective committed to strengthening the voice of the Ethical Culture Movement. We work deeply in relationships to examine our shared work and elicit the best in our ethical practice. We center societies in our relationship- and network- and coalition-building. And not least, we are committed to preserving, promoting, and protecting our values with systems of mutual support and mutual accountability.  Building these systems will take time, but the framework we are building provides us all with room to learn and grow. 

Much has changed since July. The newly expanded board of directors of the AEU had its first meeting a few weeks ago on October 14th. Bylaws amendments passed by the voting delegates and member societies at the 108th Assembly mandated the AEU to change from a board of 11 elected directors to a board of 25 representative directors. The board is now composed of one representative from each member society of the AEU, two representatives from the National Leaders Council (NLC), and one Future of Ethical Societies (FES) representative — a spot that had remained vacant in recent years. On August 3rd, a JEDI statement and proposed board working agreements were published as a way to facilitate this board expansion.

Our new representative board has to find a way forward for the AEU. Daring to be different, we have moved from monthly board meetings to quarterly meetings. Representative directors have been invited into regional teams tasked with learning, collaborating, and visioning to bring collective aspirations to the full board. Board members are the regional teams; the regional teams are incubators for the ideas that will shape the future of the AEU. This model firmly grounds the board’s work and the AEU’s future in our member societies by relying on self-organizing society representation.

Every director is a member of a regional team, which is composed of 5-6 directors over four regions: Northeast, South, West/Midwest, and Eastern/Atlantic. The team size is kept small so that directors can get to know each other, learn about each other’s societies, and share ideas that can incubate in a smaller environment before being brought before the 25-member board. Ideas have a better chance to mature and thrive in a regional team before they are brought to the board where they can be leveraged to shape our future.

By strengthening relationships at the society and regional level, we can begin to consolidate and share resources. The budget and short-term development plan aims to support regional teams through leadership skills growth and systems buildout in the coming months. For instance, our pilot Transformational Leadership Cohort has already begun meeting to deepen leadership skills for representatives amongst the AEU’s self-organizing groups: board officers, Presidents’ Council co-chairs, the Restorative Justice Community of Practice facilitator, National Leaders Council (NLC) officers, the Finance Committee chair, and AEU staff. We hope this will be the first of many cohorts as we move forward together as a working board, national institution, and movement. 

All of this — the provisional budget, JEDI, the board’s working agreements, regional teams, investment in leadership — is designed to support informed decision-making about the next steps for the AEU. We have established a flexible framework where leaders within our movement can start to generate and interrogate ideas for the future in relationship with each other. Not only for the next year, but for the future. We want this organization to thrive at the forefront of the broader ethical movement for another 140 years. That means holding space for what we look like next year and thinking about what we want to look like a decade from now.

As this framework unfolds, you’ll hear more voices from folks throughout the movement who are positioned to facilitate this shared work. Let us know if this regional and society-centered work resonates with you by emailing us at presidentandvp@aeu.org.

In solidarity,

Khandra Sears

President of the AEU Board