My focus during the past several months has been on several issues: financial responsibility, distribution of our newsletter, Special Interest Groups, and membership in E-USA.

While our Treasurer is responsible for receiving all Esperanto-USA income and payment of all our obligations, the Board is financially responsible for authorizing expenses. Fund managers appointed by the President manage expenditures from named financial funds. The board must be able to oversee all income and expense. Oversight by the board has improved during the past two years. The Board now receives a monthly statement of all expenses and a quarterly statement of income and expense. We still must exercise diligence reviewing these reports.

Up until now, full members of Esperanto-USA could elect to receive a paper copy of our newsletter, Usona Esperantisto. It was recently affirmed that this will continue to be the case. There is of course a cost of printing and mailing these copies. Esperanto-USA is committed to not leaving anyone behind as technology advances. Some people use paper mail, some email, and others use online apps like Slack and Discord for messaging. We will continue to communicate with all.

Esperanto-USA’s Regional Coordinators met by Zoom on January 25. Besides discussing our activity during the prior several months, we talked about Special Interest Groups (SIG) and membership of members of local groups in Esperanto-USA.

My report in UE 2021:5 discussed launching the listing of SIGs on the E-USA website. In his President’s column in issue 2021:6, Phil Dorcas discussed why Esperanto-USA is registering SIGs. At our meeting Regional Coordinators discussed ways to promote the registration of SIGs among members of local groups. To register, a SIG does not have to be newly formed. Existing SIGs that have an online presence on Facebook or some other social media, should also be encouraged to register.

Encouraging members of local groups to become members of E-USA was also discussed. Some Regional Coordinators reached out to local contacts asking how many members of local groups are also members of E-USA. The response was limited, but one result was clear: Some local groups have a significant fraction of their members who are also members of E-USA. Other local groups have only one or no members who are members of Esperanto-USA. One problem of course is that the structure of local groups vary greatly and the question of who is a member of a local group often does not have an obvious answer. It was agreed among Regional Coordinators that we need a campaign to get members of local groups to join Esperanto-USA. I discussed this need for this kind of membership campaign with other members of the E-USA Membership Committee. They agreed to take this up as a future project.