A Special Message from the OASIS President

As some of you will remember, at last year’s AGM I discussed in my remarks that with the impact of the pandemic, OASIS had begun looking inwardly at how we are structured, how we do our daily business and how we support our membership successfully in order to ensure that OASIS is well positioned to best support its member agencies moving forward.

As you are aware, OASIS has always been a volunteer driven organization, the role of President has always been an elected volunteer position and is reflected as such in our by-laws. The operational and governance structures of OASIS have not changed since its inception.

In recognition of the growing workload for a volunteer, the complexity of the issues and the need for longer term continuity, the Board began to explore if this was sustainable.

As part of this, the structure of our Board, the role of committees, the role of leadership, by-laws, the cost of operation and other areas were also all reviewed.

In the Autumn of 2021, OASIS engaged Sharon Brodovsky of Cathexis Consulting to formally conduct this review and to reconsider the organisation’s strategic plan over the next few years.

The outcome of this process was that the board structure, governance and organisational operations are not sustainable in their current forms.

The key recommendations were that there needed to be an immediate overhaul to OASIS’ Board operations and that a permanent, paid, full-time CEO as well as full time staff should be hired to oversee operations of the organisation. These recommendations were considered by the Board, as well as a Governance Committee, and have now been approved by the Board.

To begin this transition, OASIS is seeking to hire a Project Manager, either an individual or an organisation, to facilitate the shift from a volunteer resourced and run organisation to a CEO/staff resourced Corporation

Let me assure you that things will not change overnight. This process will take time. And the first step in this process is the hiring of a Project Manager. We have now posted the Job opportunity to several sites with a focus on finding someone who has had previous experience in organisational restructuring, as well as knowledge of effective governance of Boards and Committees.

It is hoped that the Project Manager will be able to complete their role over the span of eight months, starting in March. We will let you all know who the successful candidate is by the end of February.

As part of this process, we have decided to delay this year’s AGM from May to August in order to give more time for the Project Manager to complete the work ahead of the next AGM.

However, the Conference itself will go ahead as planned from May 11^th-13^th.  More detail will come in terms of the timing of the AGM in August.

As we have looked to you in the past to identify issues and priorities, over the coming months, and throughout this process, the Project Manager will be reaching out to the membership for your guidance, feedback, views and insights as we move forward.

Be on the lookout for communication from us on this topic over the next number of months.

Thank you to all of our Member Agencies for all of the hard work you do every day and every year supporting the individuals and families we support. But especially for your work during these uncertain times.

I look forward to continuing to work with you all and seeing what the future will bring for OASIS.

Regards,

Geoff McMullen