We have just rolled to 101, and I so appreciate all of you who were able to come today. It is fabulous. We had a lot more people register, so I'm sure that people will be trickling in, but really to be mindful of our time and our space together today, I am going to get started. So first and foremost, I just want to say thank you and welcome. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come here and be with us. I feel like I need a pause before we really get into this content, just so we can really be present. My computer just broke and decided to restart, so I'm coming in like, ooh. So I invite you all to take a collective like, ooh, welcome to this space and just being here together today. I'm actually really excited about the time together, and I love getting to spend time with you. So I'm going to go over a couple housekeeping items. Amy Valentine is here on our call. She is our lovely IT support for today, so if you have any questions, ping her. She's going to be doing our breakout rooms in a little while. She will also be sending you evaluations later, so yay. Thank you, Amy, so much for being here to support us. We have a lot of ground to cover today, as always, but that being said, we do want your questions. We do want your participation, so come off mute, write things in the chat. We have a lot of content, and we're going to cover kind of at a really high level all the stuff that we need to get through. We won't have time to go into like the nitty-gritty nuances of every single question, but what we will be doing, and I want to be mindful about it at the beginning, is that we're going to set up a parking lot. So if there's any questions that you have that you feel like we didn't get to fully, we'll put those on a list, and we can discuss them at an upcoming monthly roundtable. So if there's something like that that you're like, hey, I have a question about this, but it's going to take longer than we have time for today, put that in the chat, like write parking lot, right? Christina, save this for this. I just wanted to let you all know that we are very mindful of trying to save that time and space for things that we really want to do a deeper dive on. So great. With that, we're going to get started. So today, the planners and presenters of this course have no relevant financial relationships and ineligible companies to disclose. Upon signing in on the attendance sheet, attending the course in its entirety, due to the criticality of the content, and completing the course evaluation, you will receive a certificate that documents the continuing nursing education contact hours for this activity. And the International Association of Forensic Nurses is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers Commission on Accreditation. Okay. So again, welcome. Today, Morgan and I will both be presenting, and again, I just want to say thank you for volunteering and taking on this really important role within IFN. We appreciate all of you like raising your hand to say yes to extra in support of the association and in support of forensic nurses. We are impressed that you're here and that you said yes to this. Morgan, would you? So I'm Christina. I am the membership director here at IFN. For those of you who do not know me, my background is in advocacy, and I was thrilled to be hired on at IFN because as the same program coordinator in New Hampshire, one of my greatest joys was seeing retention actually go up when we were able to bring nurses together in community to really help fight like the burnout and the trauma and all of the other stuff that I'm so impressed that you all manage so well all the time. So I love being able to do that here with all of you and help affect all the nurses in your states as well. So a little bit about me. I'm like Grand Central Station for all of you. So if you need anything, I'm always your first point of contact and direct kind of out into the organization. So Morgan, let me turn it over to you. Thanks, Christina. And hi, everyone. Thanks again for being here. My name is Morgan Moeller, and I'm the chief operations officer at IFN. I joined the association back in May of 2023. So still within my first year here. But I come to the role with a significant background and working on issues related to gender based violence, both in the US context as well as internationally. And I bring organizational leadership experience to IFN as well. I work closely with Jen to operationalize the vision and strategy that she and the board set for the association. And I supervise all of the operations side of the house in terms of staff. Also work closely on our foundation and the international work that IFN is doing. Similar to Christina, I come as an advocate. I'm not a nurse. I always feel like I need to tell people that. But I also have a special place in my heart for forensic nursing. When I ran a rape crisis program in Florida, our program oversaw the community-based forensic nursing services for a three-county area. And IFN really helped establish that program in terms of giving us the foundation of policies, procedures, best practices, et cetera. I'm so honored to be here and to contribute to supporting all of our amazing members and forensic nurses. Thank you, Morgan. Okay. So our learning outcome today is that chapters and chapter officers will report an increased understanding of tools of governance for nonprofit boards and be able to articulate the chapters role within IAFN. Okay. So the three big chapter goals are education, public policy, membership recruitment, and engagement. And we'll kind of dive into each of those, but I think it's important to really stop here. These are really the three things that chapters are tasked with. If you're doing something that's outside of the scope of these, it might not be necessary. It might not be appropriate. So these are really the things that chapters are responsible for doing in support of the association and membership really in particular, as we are a membership association, you are a membership association. So to kind of clearly state that at the beginning, as we go through into a couple more nuanced details here. IAFN is a 501c6. That is our nonprofit status. And so I really want to clarify that here because there's a couple things. So that is also the tax status of all of you as chapters. And it's important to know that we are not the kind of nonprofit where people can make tax-free donations. The IAFN foundation is that. So a lot of you have asked about fundraising. So just want to be clear about that. You are all like affiliates of IAFN and that we all share the same tax status. We all share the same IRS requirements, legal requirements and association norms and practices. So a lot of the things that Morgan and I are going to talk to you today, I promise you are not things that we have made up. They're actual things that we have to abide by and be mindful of as an organization as well. So I'm going to start there. A couple other things to know about that. We all work on the same calendar year basis. So your fiscal accounting is from January to December. We share that. We all, anything that comes in in a calendar year, anything that goes out in that same calendar year is how we do our accounting. You also share that. Even if we pay somebody in January for something they did in December, it's really what happens in that year. We have shared financial policies and defined policies. We must have a clear mission and we have to be marginally financially successful. So those are some of the very basic requirements. Morgan, did you have anything else that you wanted to add here? Okay. So what are some of the things that we share from IAFN's perspective and that IAFN generates? I really think about the International Association of Forensic Nurses as the scaffolding for this house that we all share, right? And maybe there's chapters of room and you get to decorate your room a little bit, but we really have this foundation that we all work from. And in some ways that makes us all stronger because we kind of alleviate some of the nuanced background business-y stuff. And we give you this really clear mission, vision, values. We give you really clear brand logo adherence that actually elevates a lot of the work that you're doing locally, maybe gives you a leg up on other things. IAFN also has now a lot of staff. Our staff actually has recently grown from, like we've almost doubled since I started, which is great. Now we have 15 forensic nurses on staff. So we are so proud of some of those changes. And I mentioned that here because specifically in relation to some of our position statements and now even extra clinical expertise that we have that is driving some of our statements, some of our endorsements, updates to the protocols. It is so much, it always was awesome, right? But it's even so much more extensive now. So when I talk about our position statements, when I talk about our endorsements, we really need to be mindful that we all share those things. We can't have chapters and the association saying different things out in the world. There's no expectation that you know everything on one of our position statements intimately. I think that's a lot, a lot extra, right? There's a lot of pieces, but these are definitely things that I want to highlight that we work on together and that you can come to us for, especially if you're getting asked to like endorse something. And we'll, again, we'll go into some of the nuances of how, but these are some of our really shared things and we actually are stronger as an organization when we speak from one voice. Morgan, did you have any? I'll just briefly add that the Board of Directors, both the Association Board of Directors and the IAFN Foundation Board of Directors have been working really diligently together over the past six plus months, really, to dig into the mission, vision, and values of the two entities and really excited that they are in a place of agreement on that. So each entity has a new clearly defined mission, a shared vision, and shared values. And we're in the process of putting a plan together to release that and share it with all of you and also working really diligently to build a strategic plan around that. So much more to come in 2024 as we share that information out to all of you. Thanks, Morgan. And then some of the chapter-specific responsibilities. And so you're responsible for your day-to-day operations. You're responsible for your specific chapter governance. Your role is to implement the IAFN mission, vision, values. That's something we all share. Again, providing that forensic nursing expertise locally, we know that there's so many things that come up in your spaces because you're all doing this work, right? And I always really think, I just like, I love the ecosystem that we have between the chapters and IAFN being able to really address the practice issues that you're seeing. It's very frequent that chapter officers come to me and say, hey, we're having this challenge. And recently we've been able to put out position statements, like definitely like evidence-based research back position statements that have helped chapters express an opinion or speak on behalf of policies and patients or develop trainings, right? I think case review, our monthly case reviews that we're starting in 2024 is something that has come out of conversation with a lot of members and a lot of you. So you're really almost like a canary in the pool line for us on what's happening and what you need. And so that's like this ecosystem. If you do trainings that are like really important, like let us know there's this real good relationship we have around that because we're all working towards the benefit of our patients. Here responsibly is also financial management of the chapter. That includes logging into your PNC account every three months and making a transaction, right? I have three chapters right now whose bank accounts were recently closed. So that is all of the board's responsibility. You need to make a transaction every three months and it could be a dollar to the foundation. But that is something. So really making sure that you're spending money on behalf of the chapter, your role isn't necessarily to save money. I know a lot of you are very good savers, but as long as you're intentionally spending funds on those three goals we talked about to the benefit of the chapter and your members, great. There's really no reason to kind of hold on to every penny the way that we might in our personal checkbooks. Your responsibility is also to develop chapter specific policies. This has come up more and more in conversation lately with some of you as different things have come up. IFN has a lot of policies and whenever possible use ours as a template. We should have very similar things, but there are some things that you'll make your own policies on. Like a reimbursement policy. You can look at ours, but your chapter should have some specific things that include fiscal responsibility and pieces like that. Also chapter decisions are things that you own as a board. Anything that your board decides and we'll talk about the appropriate way to record that later, but that's something else that your board's really responsible for. Maintaining consistency with IFN. Morgan, I'm going to call on you every slide now. Okay, no problem. I think we're going to dig into this a little bit more later so I can hold most of what I have to say for now. Thanks. Excellent. Part of, again, why us going over some of these big picture things is really important. All of you just inherited a business and your business is the business of the chapter. It's a different legal fiscal responsibility than a typical volunteer role. Yes, you're all our lovely volunteers and I really appreciate that, but there is an additional responsibility here. We really want to impress that upon you today. 15% of non-profits fail. That's a lot of non-profits. We're going to talk a little bit about why, but really, again, there are so many layers to your new role here that are important. Did you know you'd be running a business today? Some people don't when they sign up for this, but we're glad that you're here and we're happy to help walk you through it. Some of the reasons that non-profits fail are because they lack strong leadership and business acumen. A lot of people come in with really good intentions, but that's not really the same as really understanding governance and leadership. I'll even look over to Morgan. I'm so happy that she's here with a ton of that experience. I'm learning from her every day, so we can always continue to learn. Sometimes a non-profit has crisis, unfortunate, but frequently there's not the resources to survive if and when that happens. The non-profit, again, maybe has a well-intentioned but inexperienced board of directors, but have no fear here. We are going to talk about some things that will help you as you take on this role here. When we ask you what does it mean to be the leader of a non-profit board and a leader of an IFM chapter, again, this is really related to taking on the responsibility of owning the reality that this is a business. It's not management, but it is leadership, and that's governance. Part of governance is really setting the standard, being accountable, and being coordinated and connected on the way that you speak on behalf of an organization and not on behalf of yourself as an individual. We'll dig into that a little bit with some clear examples, but I think that when we think about even my role here. I'm a membership director. I work on behalf of IFN, but you all know Christina has independent thoughts, things that I may say to you, especially in our officer meetings about things that are going on, and that's appropriate because I am not a fiduciary of IFN. As a fiduciary of an organization, you are always speaking on behalf of the organization in relation to that organization, so the responsibility and the way that we maybe communicate from that role is really different, and that feels really nuanced, but practice thinking that way, and practice literally putting that hat on and saying, like, if I'm talking from Christina's perspective or if I'm talking from this chapter's perspective, is it different? If it is different, why? And kind of like look at yourself for some of that. I think that that self-reflection is a really important opportunity to learn the difference between maybe what we're accustomed to with leadership, and I know you're all great leaders because you wouldn't be here if you're not, and moving into that real governance perspective, and then this is one of my favorite things. This is where we have a lot of support for you in doing this. When you make decisions as a leader of an IFN chapter, what information or resources do you turn to? And so I'm lucky I get a lot of your phone calls. One of the things that we talk about here at IFN is ethical communication, and what that really means is if you have a, it really means direct communication, you know, being accountable to somebody else. So if Morgan and I have some beef, we don't, just to be clear, but if we did, I would go directly to Morgan and we would talk it out, and that's kind of how we define ethical communication. A nuance to that is if I'm not ready to talk to Morgan, I can go talk to one person, not to complain about Morgan, but to think through how I'm going to approach Morgan. And so sometimes the chapter officers, particularly a lot of the presidents, need somebody else that they can talk to about a chapter circumstance in a confidential way, and they'll call us just to have a very confidential conversation about potential action items and action plans. So I want to be clear that we're happy to do that with you. I can't tell you exactly what to do and what's the right thing, but we want to be really mindful that we want you as officers to have ethical communication with each other, first and foremost, and as a board. So there really shouldn't be, like, conversations happening outside of meetings. If there's a problem with somebody on your board, the board has to address it. The board should be addressing it in the room, not, we've seen text messages, I've seen emails, I get emails from like four board members, and that's really where you've gone away from speaking with one person about an action plan to a really different type of communication that's no longer ethical. And so that's just like a very high-level example again, but I'm kind of in a rabbit hole from where I wanted to be with this, but I think that's a really important thing. And so part of talking about the tools we have, one, I just talked about us at IAFN to support you, and two, there's all these documents. So when I bring these up, I'm always thinking about these in terms of, you should all read these when you start. We have the affiliation agreement. This outlines the relationship between the chapter and IAFN. We have bylaws. That outlines the relationship between the chapter and your members. We have policies and procedures. So both IAFN has policies and procedures, as well as your chapter. Some of our policy and procedures are things that we have asked you to do, again, in terms of the affiliation agreement, how we're going to work together around those shared pieces. IFN has a strategic plan. Like Morgan said, we'll be doing it this year. I'm very excited about that. Your budget for the current year. That's something that you can develop. That's a tool you have to hold yourselves accountable to that fiscal maintenance piece. And the position statements, again, around our values and common thoughts around our practice. And so frequently, most chapters don't have concepts. Most of you are amazing, and you're able to work together in this incredible way, and I'm very impressed. And one of the things that I see between more high-functioning chapters and chapters that maybe struggle more is that whenever there are questions, the high-functioning chapters are going back to these documents, reviewing them, reading them, and maybe calling me about the sentence. Hey, Christina, what does this really mean? But you're going back to them. Because I know, even when I started, I read these, and I said, okay, good, I understand them. But I don't understand them unless there's actually a problem in front of me that I'm looking at to understand. So I want to refer to these because nine times out of ten when somebody calls me with a question, I'm pulling up this document. We're looking at it together. We're reading it, and we're discussing what is said here. So be proactive. Like, you have these tools that are available to you. Your board can pull them up. If you have a question at a meeting, that doesn't mean you won't have to call me. That's not what I'm saying. I'd love to talk to you. But you have a lot of answers in these documents, and they're great tools for you. So I keep mentioning this term here, the fiduciary relationship term. And this is defined as involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary. Morgan, do you want to talk about this a little bit more? Sure, thanks. And before we get too far away from the last slide, I just wanted to also reiterate what Christina was saying, which is as an incoming officer, I really encourage you to take a little bit of time to read through the documents that she outlined there and familiarize yourself with them. It's a little bit dense reading. Definitely give you that. But I think it's a great starting place to understand the basic guidelines that your chapter has agreed to in terms of how it should function, everything from the frequency of meetings and how meetings should be scheduled to the way that other things are going to be handled on a business day-to-day situation. So I wanted to mention that before I lost track of it. And the other piece that she mentioned was about chapter budgets. And I just want to throw out that I'm not sure how many chapters are actually putting together a budget and voting on that as a board every year. But to Christina's point, you are entrusted with dues and should be using those dues in furtherance of the three primary goals that are set out for you. So having a budget can really help guide some of that. And we can wait, we can share some resources as well on budget development, how to go about doing that. So, sorry, sorry for the aside. Related to fiduciary relationship. This is essentially your legal obligation to the chapter. So as a board member of your chapter, you are legally accountable. You're listed in the legal documents associated with the chapter. When we file our annual IRS 990, your name's going to be on there because you have oversight and legal responsibility for the goings on of the chapter. And you can think about this in the context of corporations, right? So corporations oftentimes have shareholders who are the people that maybe buy stock in the organization. And then there are the trustees who oversee the functioning of the organization. Same thing here. You all are managing this nonprofit because you're all incorporated as independent nonprofits, and you're responsible for providing the fiscal oversight, complying with your bylaws, all of the things that come along with that. And what that means in practice is putting the interest of the chapter of the organization, the nonprofit that you're responsible for, I had a personal interest. And we're going to talk a little bit more in a few minutes about what that looks like in practice and how to manage things like conflicts of interest that may come up. Thanks Morgan. All right. So digging a little bit deeper into the fiduciary responsibility is this duty of care. So you are responsible for caring for the organization. You can think about it like a little puppy, hopefully a little more robust than a puppy, but you know, you're really responsible for the wellbeing of that entity. So it's really the same thing when you're a chapter officer, like you have a duty to care for this thing that cannot care for itself and will not thrive without you. And some of the responsibilities that you have are having good business judgment, really having due diligence and decision-making. So like your board should be having discussion, having the opportunity to talk things out before you make votes and make decisions about what really is beneficial for the chapter in your state to prepare and prepare, sorry, and participate. You know, having agendas in advance, making sure that everybody has the ability to come, you know, ready, present, and able to participate in your meetings, right? Like schedule meetings so most board members can come. Really be mindful of encouraging that. Exercising ordinary and reasonable care and the performance of duties. I think that's a little self-explanatory. And then this one's really legal, but act like a prudent person. I think all of you do that every day in your roles. And then be informed and protect confidential information indefinitely. And I think that one is really critical. So as a chapter officer, you are going to have additional access to information, proprietary IFN information, and membership information that you would not otherwise have. And those are really two things that require a lot of extra care and really knowing what is or isn't confidential. And when you're having conversations about members, membership, et cetera, who has access to that information, only board members, nobody who has not signed a confidentiality or COI should ever see that. If you have membership committees or anything like that, they should not see that information unless there's a specific policy in place, COIs and confidentiality forms. We can talk about that at a different time, but you're a safeguard of that information right down to when you send emails, we should be using VCC, not the two, right? So we can copy all that information out of there. And we know in the work that we do, that confidentiality is really important. We have members that are survivors and that's not the reason that you should be protecting confidential information, but that is something that I'm really mindful of all the time, right? So it gives me additional gravitas when we talk about protecting our membership information. We also have this duty of loyalty. So when we talk about conflict of interest, we do have a responsibility to disclose them. We have a responsibility to be mindful that they exist and to address them. And frequently we don't be afraid of them. Frequently we can have solutions to actual or perceived conflicts. And sometimes we're talking about perceived conflicts in ways of managing that. And one of the things about caring for the organization is really being mindful of perception and reality. Being faithful to the organization, putting aside personal agendas. Some of us sometimes show up thinking about ourselves, but really when you're in this seat at the board, you're putting on that hat of what is in the best interest of this organization. We, again, I just mentioned that and then loyalty again, you're being, you're speaking on behalf of the chapter. So being a really good ambassador to the community, Morgan, did you have anything else to add here? I think we're going to talk a little bit more about this, but just to key in on the actual or apparent conflicts of interest. So we talk about a conflict of interest. Maybe there is a really obvious conflict of interest. Like my chapter is planning a conference and they have a budget to pay speakers. And I have my own consulting business. I serve on the board of the chapter, but I also want to put in a bid to be a speaker at the chapter conference. And I want to be compensated for that. That's an actual conflict, right? I shouldn't use my board seat to vote for myself or my business to be the vendor that we use for the paid conference engagement. I should recuse myself from that vote and from that discussion and leave my colleagues instead to make that determination. So that I'm not unduly influencing the conversation or potentially whether explicit or implicit, you know, applying my own personal bias to the decision-making around that. So that's an actual conflict. A potential conflict or an apparent conflict. What we mean by that is even if there is a perceived ability to separate your personal interest from the interest of the chapter, the interest from the board that you're serving on, if there is something that you think on paper might look a little questionable, might raise some eyebrows or, or have some questions come up related to it, sharing that information is important. And then you can work with your colleagues on the board to resolve that perceived conflict if necessary. But ethically disclosing that is the first important step. Thanks, Morgan. Next slide. I don't like this term duty of obedience, but it's a legal term. So I have to put it up there. So forgive the word, but we'll go through this list anyway. So again, we have to be faithful to the association first, the mission and goals. If you have, and especially later this year when we put out information, if you have questions about the mission, vision, values, if there are things that you can't support, like, let me know, let's talk about it or let your board know. You know, this, If your job really in this role is to be supportive of the association, and if there's an inconsistency there, that really needs to be addressed. Your duty of obedience is to follow those governing documents that we put up on the screen and talked about earlier to the best of your ability. You know, and I think just remembering to read them frequently, we read them in January. Most of you do read them in January. You look them over and most of you do it every year. Most of you have been on for a couple of years. Like, I know you do it. So just remembering that they exist and referring back to them as things come up, I think is really the critical piece. Sometimes we get so focused on solutions or solving a problem, we forget that the answer already exists. Again, 90% of the time, that's what we're going back to. So follow them. Use them all the time. It's helpful to have them pulled up at meetings. We did that one. So the Board of Directors has the power to act as a board. Individuals do not have any legal authority. So we'll talk a little bit about what joint decision making looks like in a minute. But that's really important. So anytime that you're doing something in the role of a chapter officer, it has to be something that the board has discussed, agreed to, and voted on. Like, if you're speaking at an event on behalf of the chapter, the board should know about it. It should be an event that the board says it's great. It's going to align with our mission, vision, values. Yes, go forth and do X. You're recruiting members. And the same thing, like where, how, why are all details that, you know, should be discussed in minutes. And this question comes up a lot with treasurers. Like, does the board have to say yes to every single penny that I spend when I spend it? And like, no, you could have a discussion where the board says we're going to be purchasing these six things for the conference and give the treasurer kind of latitude to purchase those six things and then have them report back to the board. They should have a report out in each, each month or whenever you have minutes. So there are ways to like, you know, not have to talk about every penny, but everybody really should be acting with confidence that this is something the board has discussed, agreed to. If you have questions, go back to the board and have the discussion again and put it back on the agenda. And then the next one is really important. So we're going to accept and abide by the board decisions, even if we voted against them, or even if we disagree with it. I'm going to talk about what that looks like. So I think that this, this funny example I have here is going to be really illustrative of what it means when we talk about that and why it's so important. Again, we're speaking on behalf of any board that we're on, including a chapter board, you're speaking on behalf of the chapter, right? And so when we think about conflicts, when we think about disagreement, that's not in the best interest of the organization. So, question I get a lot is, what if I was the only board member to vote against something and a chapter member asked me for more information about the vote or decision? So, let's go through some examples. If your board voted for salami sandwiches, that's all you say. Our board voted for salami sandwiches. I know it's pretty simple, but you don't go into it. I don't have in my minutes that Morgan voted yes, Christina voted no, unless there was a specific motion for a roll call vote and that was passed and that would be recorded in minutes, but you don't talk about it. You know, I think that it's really important when you speak on behalf of the board, the board is speaking in one voice. So, if you're asked about it, the board decided that salami sandwiches were the best thing. In your minutes, Morgan, if you want to jump in here, Morgan and I are both like meeting nerds, so we can do like a six hour presentation on minutes. We won't bore you with that today. But in your minutes, you're also saying the board voted for salami sandwiches. You're not going through like detail by detail. Morgan said that she likes peanut butter and Christina said that she likes cream cheese. It's not that. You can talk about the nature of the conversation, the points that were raised, what it was for, what was against, but it's really not about what Morgan specifically says or what Christina specifically says. Sometimes when we move forward in history and people are referring back to those minutes, if Morgan said X, maybe Morgan changed her mind over the course of the conversation and the minutes don't account for that. So, in the minutes, we really should be talking about the final decision that was made because that's what we're moving forward. That is our new foundational keystone that we're all moving forward from. This is now true for us as a board and as a chapter. And the bottom one, we're not writing that in the minutes. Everyone but Sue voted for salami sandwiches. When we're talking about it, everyone, we're not saying everyone but Sue voted for this. We're not saying I disagreed with the vote. Again, what we're really representing is the same thing in all of those different avenues and different ways. All right, now we're getting into conflict of interest. And this is, actually, I just had a really good conversation with New Jersey about this yesterday. Nicole, how do you feel after our conversation? Do you feel better? Yeah, I feel so much better after our conversation. I think I really understand what it is and how we can resolve it. So, I appreciate your help. We love that. We love that. So, I got a very panicked email that said, hey, can we talk to you right now about this, right? So, we scheduled a meeting and now they're feeling better. So, I just wanted to bring that up because I think a lot of people have a fear and like the kind of knee-jerk reaction about this term, conflict of interest. And because it is, it's like legal, it's weighty, it's all these things. And we do need to have care with this. So, we're going to talk a little bit about what it is, why it's important, and how to resolve them. And we'll go through some examples. But I want to kind of bring in that, what kind of what that, that maybe shift in perspective that Nicole and her team went through last week, or this week, because I think that when we understand it better, we can actually admit what our conflicts are. We can be better aware of them and better manage them. Again, to our personal benefit and to the benefit of the chapter, you're all leaders in your state. So, what you do in this role impacts you personally and may impact the way that you interact with other people in the state during this role and or after. So, really being clear about being mindful of when you're acting in this role, why, when you're acting in other roles, why, can only be beneficial to you and your professionalism, you know, for the rest of your career, really. So, what is conflict of interest? Morgan, do you want to take that one? Sure. So, the conflict of interest, as we were talking about before, really goes back to your duty to put the organization first. So, it's looking at things like, are there aspects of your personal or professional life that may conflict with your role as an officer in terms of decision making? Some of those things could be really obvious, like the example I gave before. I am on the board of a chapter. We're planning a conference and we're looking for conference speakers. I also have my own independent consulting business and I train professionally on forensic nursing. In that scenario, as previously shared, that's a clear example of I need to disclose the interest. Ideally, I have disclosed that I have a conflict of interest, a prospective conflict of interest on a form that you all will be filling out and returning and sending back to us. But secondly, that I have a plan to address it. That's something that would be talked about among myself and the board. So, the board knows because I share up front, I have my own consulting business, and that could affect decision making when we're hiring speakers or agreeing to certain types of training. We come up with a plan that is, I am going to recuse myself from those planning discussions or minimally from selecting the speakers. A less apparent conflict of interest might be something like a chapter president making a really strong statement about forensic nurses needing degrees in forensic nursing, and also being a faculty member at a forensic nursing program. So, many people hold strong beliefs that nurses should continue to seek educational opportunities and advanced degrees to improve the profession, but at the same time, nursing programs themselves cannot survive without the tuition dollars generated by students. So, it's fine to hold an opinion about an advanced degree or needing advanced education, but expressing that as an officer, when my role is also to represent the university and promote our forensic nursing program, and try and recruit students, may be a conflict of interest that isn't as apparent as me trying to go after contract dollars that the chapter is offering. So, sometimes it is really apparent, really clear, it's disclosed, it's talked about, we have a game plan for how we would address it if something like that came up. Other times, there might be a nudge of accountability from one board member to another to say, hey, we feel really strongly about this as board president, you're representing the association, or the chapter rather, so is there something that we should talk about or consider together about the way that this might be a conflict of interest? And I think that goes back to the ethical communication that Christina was talking about, being empowered to work as a team in a kind, caring, and compassionate way to hold one another accountable to these kinds of standards. Christina, anything else you want to add on that? No, I don't think so. Thanks. Okay, so we had a couple examples to go through here, just to kind of illustrate it a little bit more, and one of the questions that we get sometimes is, can you hold multiple leadership positions in your state? And the answer is, yes, it depends. Some of them might be in conflict. A good example would be if you're on two boards, and in one of the boards, its primary purpose is really fundraising. Like, we had a member in the past who was on the board of an advocacy organization, and that was the goal, right? The board's goal in that role was fundraising, and she was also on the chapter board, and what she did was recuse herself from any discussions related to anything that had to do with money as part of the chapter board. So she was able to maintain her position on both boards, but she was really careful, like, oh, we're starting to talk about this, like, I need to leave the room, and they would reflect that in a minute, like, Susan left the room when, and maybe call her back. So, there are ways to do this. There might be different positions that conflict. We get questions a lot about maybe people who work for government agencies, general's office, things like that. And frequently an agency's office, or some of them are more government sponsored folks, will, their office will say no, because of the perceived or actual conflict. But if the office is okay with it, if the member is okay with it, and if the board's okay with it, there might not be, right? But there might also be times that person has to recuse themselves from different discussions or votes, depending on how those roles overlap. Can you have your own forensic nursing business and be on the board of an IAFN chapter? And I think Morgan had just given kind of an example to this effect. And the answer is, again, kind of depends, right? So, this is something that you absolutely would disclose. If your business predominantly makes money through education, you really shouldn't be involved in anything to do with education, right? So, you want it to be really clear, particularly if you have a call for abstracts or something like that, and you're selecting a chapter officer over a member, you really don't want that negativity. You know, the personal negativity that's happening. So, whatever the board can do to make sure that that individual, and it's transparent with members, this individual is not part of those discussions, is really important for all the individuals involved and for the relationships that you have in your state and the chapter, right? You have to make sure that you're doing what you're doing for the chapter. Morgan, anything you want to add to this one? Yeah, I'd say that another intersection point in this kind of similar example is I have a forensic nursing business as a chapter officer, and I leverage the information that I have access to as an officer to try and promote sales specifically in the interest of my business. Kind of leverage the influence or authority I have and the access that I have to data and information to benefit myself. So, you know, there's a lot of things like that that can sometimes surface, particularly if you're running your own business and that has a direct intersection with IFN. So, maybe it's different if you, I don't know, you have a home health business, it has nothing to do with forensic nursing, and there's some clear lines of separation versus other instances. But again, I think the primary thing here is being forthright, honest, talking with the board about that. Thinking through possible scenarios where things could be a real conflict of interest and importantly, a perceived conflict of interest on the part of your membership or others, and making sure that there's a strategy in place to address them. In rare cases, it may feel like it's really difficult or near impossible to resolve a conflict of interest on a permanent basis. And in those cases, the board should be asking really critical questions about whether it's in the best interest of the chapter to have that person serve on the board, but those would be in the small minority for sure. Thanks, Morgan. Morgan talked a little bit about this specifically with using the chapter to leverage your business. We talked a little bit about this earlier with having access to proprietary information. Your member list should only ever be used for chapter purposes, right? They're your clients, they're your customers. It's really important that you really very firmly and strongly protect that. We also need to protect our members' preferences. So our members, if they opt out of email, if they opt out of mail, if they opt out of different types of communication, we need to be mindful of that. Other proprietary information deals with IFNs, logo, and branding. There's a lot of things that we might talk about at a chapter officer roundtable that falls under confidential. You have access to information that maybe regular members don't, particularly right now, right? I think in December, we announced that we were updating the mission vision values, and that was something that only chapter officers were told, not regular members. So there are some things that you do have access to, because the work that you do is directly impacted by things that are happening at IFN and happening at the board level. So we ask that you are very clear on what is what and help us protect that information for the benefit of our members and the benefit of your chapter and IAFN. I think we already talked about this one a little bit. So let me just say here, I guess, before we kind of move on. This is a good. In the past, we've had some chapters who have come to us and asked for information on how to hire somebody or who to hire for training, or particularly around exhibiting, right? If they have an exhibiting hall, like, who can exhibit there? What are the policies? What can they do in the hall? What does that look like? And what I'll stop and say here is, is that one of the best ways to avoid complex of interest, because they're not only among your board members, but they could be among, like, exhibitors in an exhibit hall, right? If we're allowing people in and we're saying, you can do this and you can't do that, like, we need to be really mindful of treating everybody that we work with, whether it's an individual, an entity, an organization, whether it's related to hiring for trainings, whether it's related to them sponsoring, you know, a chapter event, providing free CE. Like, there's so many ways that chapters work with different entities within the state and avoiding complex. This isn't exactly complex of interest, but avoiding a conflict, it is really recommended that you have clear, transparent policies that can be applied the same way to anybody that's approaching your organization. So, if you have an exhibit hall at your conference, if you have sponsorship opportunities for people to buy lunch or offset cost of rooms, those things should be, excuse me, posted, there should be clear rates, there should be clear descriptions of what happens in those spaces. Frequently, not frequently, it doesn't happen a lot, but whenever there are problems, there's typically not a policy that all the board officers agree to, that they can refer back to, and that wasn't shared with the other organizations that we're interacting with. And so, I just bring that up because it's important to be mindful of how we're living in the space, especially when you're, this isn't going to happen, you're going to have a board with six of you, you're all going to work at different organizations, and Christina, the organization that was doing the CEs, why? So, there's some, maybe they're free, maybe there's a really good reason, but just being mindful of the way that the chapters proceed and exist in your state is a really important piece of this, but having clear policies when you're doing things, and that does take a little longer to have those discussions, but it also keeps your chapter consistent over time. So, whatever your policy is in 2024, it's the same policy that Marion inherits in 2026, etc., etc., etc. So, it really helps your chapter kind of have this clear foundation that you're always building on and improving on. A big time suck is chapters reinventing the wheel every year. So, when you're making these decisions, clarify your policies, you can always update them later if there's things that don't work or that don't jive with your current situations, but just a huge tip. This is something we're going to be kind of leaning into a little bit more throughout this year as well. And I just want to clarify, when Christina is reflecting on policies, we're not talking about the kind of verbal agreement or something that is generally understood among the officers, we're talking about explicit written policies. Because each entity has its own incorporated 501c6 group, you do need to have written policies that actually dictate how you do day-to-day business, just like you would for any other organization. So, when she's talking about reinventing the wheel, part of why that happens is maybe there's like an oral history or some document somewhere that everyone agreed to at one time, but it is not clearly reflected in detail, captured as something that was voted on in the minutes, or kept as a part of the historical and institutional documents for the organization. So, just doubling down on written policies that are voted on and approved by the board. Thank you, Morgan. That's a critical omission on my part. Thank you for catching that. So, officer responsibilities. I think depending on the board that you're on, the actual time per month or time per quarter or time per period of the year will change. That's something that's important to make sure all your officers kind of know at the beginning of the year, those of you that have conferences, it's a busier time. But you're really like two main, main responsibilities, aside from all the other ones that we just talked about, but like the practical task-based responsibilities are to attend your meeting and to have ethical communication in those spaces. And so, we've talked a lot about what the different ways to have that conversation around different topics. In the meantime, I want to talk about a little bit more here. Most of our bylaws have actually started holding chapter officers accountable to the number of meetings that they're attending. So, most of the bylaws state something to the effect of if you're missing more than 75% of the meetings that the board can vote that you leave. There's a clear process outlined in the bylaws, but it is really important that you're attending meetings and or if something happens in your life where you're no longer able to hold awesome responsibility, that you're really clear, like call the chapter officers and tell them. It is easier to manage fewer people well than it is to manage people who aren't able to show up and spend a lot of time following up and trying to engage with them. So, if there's something going on in your life that you just need a break, if it's a short, you know, three months, this is what's happening in my life, or, you know, this is not the right year for me, you can run again. There's no hard feelings, especially if you engage in ethical communication around the realities of your life. It happens. None of us are immune from life. Morgan, do you want to talk a little bit about meeting types? I think this is a critical distinction we get questions about quite frequently. Yeah, so oftentimes the meetings that are dictated in your bylaws, which are potentially slightly different from chapter to chapter, are things like your board meetings and your annual meeting. So, board meetings are required to do the business of the association. Board meetings could be open meetings, meaning that you allow your members to sit in and listen in on the business of the association for non-confidential, non-sensitive matters. They also could be closed board meetings, meaning that there are private meetings held exclusively by the board for which members are not invited to listen in, attend, or participate. And this could be a regular meeting, just the course of doing business on a month-to-month basis. Or you could have an open meeting, where part of the meeting is open to the membership, and then closed executive sessions. And in closed executive sessions, you might be dealing with legal matters, voting on particularly sensitive issues, things of that nature. So, the annual meeting is typically an open board meeting held at least once a year. Most of you, if not all of you, have this in your bylaws. And it's typically kind of the State of the Union address for the chapter, right? So, the board reporting out to the chapter, here's where we stand, here's what our impact has been over the past year, here's what we're doing as we look ahead. So, using IAFN as an example of this, because many of you might be familiar with IAFN's structure. IAFN's board of directors has closed meetings on a monthly basis, during which they have regular business of the board that is conducted on an ongoing basis. Whether that's approving things like position statements, or having really in-depth discussions about the mission, vision, values, strategic plan, all of those kinds of things. Once a year, IAFN has an open board meeting that is also its annual meeting. And in that meeting, IAFN is accountable to the membership and explaining where we're at, what's going on, and giving the membership an opportunity to give feedback directly to the board, and to ask the board members some really direct questions as well. Member meetings are a little bit different. These are meetings where all members are welcome, right? This is not necessarily the board doing its own board business, taking formal votes, or making decisions. Maybe these are meetings that allow for networking opportunities, educational opportunities, exchange of best practices, or talking about something really pertinent that's going on in your state. A member meeting could potentially have a board meeting take place during one part of the meeting, if it's an open board meeting, and then separate meeting time for members outside of the board meeting. I would note that there is a difference in documentation too, right? So, legally, you are required to document the minutes of your board meetings. Those have to be submitted annually, and you have to have proof, records kept about your votes and decision-making, etc. You may choose to keep minutes as well for your member meetings, because it might be helpful for folks who weren't there to get a sense of what was talked about. But it is not legally required for you to do so. So, board meetings are about the board officers doing the business, the day-to-day business of the chapter. Annual meeting is the board being accountable to giving an update, typically an open board meeting with a membership. And member meetings can happen without any official board business, without any official voting. These can be formal or informal gatherings, and they're in a separate category in terms of required documentation. Christina, did I miss anything there? Anything you want to hit on? No, I think that was great. Thank you. And this is definitely something, if you want more information about, we can talk about it at a monthly meeting as well. Your bylaws, we put this slide up here really just to highlight, like, all of this is outlined in your bylaws too. How to announce meetings, who to announce meetings to, timeframes, things like that. They're in Article 6 of your bylaws, so just wanted to highlight that. There is an objective place to go to find more information about what Martin just spoke about. All right, meetings, yay. Maria and I are like, woohoo. I know, nobody else is. Maybe a couple of you, that's fun. So, when we talk about the process of meetings, and a lot of this is really driven, again, IRS requirements relate to the fact that you have to have extramural meetings, you have to have certain things in your meetings, the bank requires it. And this also helps you be accountable to those legal responsibilities that we talked about at the beginning. And so, like, common meeting practice, an agenda typically prepared by a president, however, it doesn't have to be. If your chapter, and this goes for any chapter task, your board can determine that this task is done by X officer, and that's okay. There has to be a clear, transparent way for other officers and or members to submit topics to the agenda in advance. Because even if Christina is president, it should not be a case where Christina is queen of the world and has to decide and ignore other things. So, there should be a really clear, transparent process on how things get on the agenda, the order that things appear on the agenda. And sometimes there are, I think, to Morgan's point, there are kind of established practices, but they don't always get communicated every year with turnover. So, sometimes other new officers just don't know what your process is, even if it exists. And the agenda should be transparent and made available to all board ahead of time. That would include any attachments, any documents you'll be discussing, any policies. If your chapter is an app to review a protocol, it should be attached. Everybody on the board should have the opportunity to look at it, to review it, to ask questions. So, come prepared to have a meaningful discussion about whatever those agenda items are, even if at your meeting, you're saying, we're going to table this. If you're not prepared, we're going to table this until X date. But the more that you do preparing the agenda, the better prepared you will all be in that space to have the most meaningful interactions with the limited time you have. And I know time is the most limited thing that we have. Minutes, they have to be taken in all meetings. There are specific requirements that have to be included in those minutes. We do have a template that I'm happy to share with all of you. They have to include things like the date, the time, if you're live or virtual, who was in attendance, if Christina leaves early, the minute should state that because if there's a vote after I've left, you know, there needs to be a clear record of if there's a quorum, if there's not, who was in the room when this decision was made. And your bylaws state that you do need to have at least four meetings annually. Most boards meet at least monthly and sometimes more again during when they're preparing for conference or things like that. Morgan, do you want to talk a little bit about process? Yeah. So generally speaking, in terms of making official votes or having an official meeting, boards should follow Robert's rules of order. These are things you've probably seen if you haven't served on a board before. You've probably seen them maybe in government proceedings or other things where, for example, the president's calling the meeting to order. Minutes are being approved from the previous meeting. People are motioning to make a vote because formal votes and decisions, or rather I should say formal decisions, need to be documented by vote. And there needs to be a motion for someone to set the vote before the others, a second, and then a formal roll call for voting on that. There should definitely be time for discussion. Sometimes there's discussion ahead of the vote being called. Sometimes there's a lot of discussion, the vote's called, and somebody says, wait a minute, I have a question about the way that vote was framed. I thought we decided X. So there might be more discussion. But generally speaking, as Christina said, you have to have a quorum, which is a majority member of the board. There's a set number depending on the number of officers on your board, but majority number there to vote. And all of those things are kind of outlined in detail in Robert's rules of order, but there's also kind of like Robert's rules at a glance that we're happy to share with you in more detail. Christina, in terms of process, anything else you want to specifically address? I don't think so. I think that the one thing I do hear, and I think Maureen just said it, is I wasn't really sure that we were voting. So sometimes the discussion evolves into a decision, and then people move on. And I think using Robert's rules of order is really helpful because you're making a motion to it for a vote, etc. But if there's a vote, be really clear on the fact that you are making a decision that, again, is now a cornerstone of what the chapter is going to believe and or all the officers are going to represent moving forward. If there's confusion, stop, ask. After a vote, it is really great for whoever is taking the minutes to read out the decision. There should be really clear, again, like this is, again, like ethical communication, it should be really clear what you were doing in that space at any given time. Is this a discussion? Is this not? I've been in meetings before where they've actually held up like a different piece of paper with a different color, whether it was a vote or a discussion, just to be really clear, like this is what we are doing in this space, especially when there's a lot of people in the room. I hope you don't need a piece of paper, but just saying like it needs to be really transparent, like if you're voting on something like that carries more weight than a discussion or like a slight decision or, you know, trying to gain consensus. Morgan? Yeah, just to add about voting and meetings in general, so it's possible that your chapter officers are all in a similar region or location and you're able to have in-person meetings and if you are, amazing, that's great, I think it helps build rapport and relationships. Many of you, however, might be in larger states or just otherwise geographically dispersed and it may not be possible for you to gather in person. So the same meeting rules apply if you're meeting in a Zoom-like format or you're having a phone-based meeting, the meeting still needs to be advertised, all of the things about having an agenda, having a quorum, motioning for decision-making and taking formal votes all still apply for a digital format, as it were, which is largely how IFN does its business as well because we're so dispersed everywhere. E-mail votes, however, are a slightly different thing and so I just wanted to call that out as its own little piece of process and usually this is dictated in your bylaws, I think most chapter bylaws are fairly consistent on this and aligned with best practices and that is if there's a decision that needs to be made in between board meetings and it's not practical for that decision to wait until the next board meeting for some reason, let's say you are planning your conference and, gosh, your keynote pulls out and now you need to vote on your second runner-up being the keynote or something like that. You can call an electronic vote and you can try to resolve the issue in that way. However, electronic votes are generally reserved for really clear-cut issues that don't require a lot of discussion or background context and to that end, electronic voting is generally required to be unanimous and so if you're putting forth a prickly issue like maybe there were two runners-up for your keynote speaker and not everyone on the board has agreed on which of those two should be the backup keynote speaker, that's something that you probably cannot resolve in a vote because you're not going to be able to reach total consensus on that. It might require some discussion about the merits of each person and why the membership needs to hear a particular perspective on something. So again, much of this, we're going to keep pointing you back to your governance documents, all the resources that you have available to you and your bylaws likely spell that out but I just wanted to highlight that as a distinction. All right. Education. So, the requirements from IAFN are that you have at least one education event annually. It can have CEs, it doesn't have to have CEs, it can be in person, it can be virtual. Any promotional materials and any materials that have the IAFN logo on them do need to conform with the newly released guidelines that came out in 2023. A lot of you were asking for clarification on use of the IAFN logo and clarification in order to make your lives easier in trying to develop, redesign, etc. So, those guidelines hopefully will help us all work a little bit better together and kind of save some time in going back and forth and redoing things that really match what we're looking for in terms of brand adherence and consistency in the way that we present out in the world. Your chapter has discretion over like your educational topics. One of the things I love about all of you is that you're out there talking to people you know what the most relevant topics are in your state, you know what people need to hear from or about you. We do hope and expect that whatever the topics and the guidance is kind of in consistent and in compliance with the national protocols, best practices, IAFN position statements. Your form, you can decide again if it's virtual or in person, and you can decide the number of trainings. A lot of you are ambitious and do an annual conference. Some of you have had that on a goal last year when you put in your annual renewal that was your big goal for the upcoming year. So a lot of you do monthly education, some of you do a really big quarterly education. A tip from us is that whatever you're doing, announce these as early as possible to your members. The chapters that have regularly scheduled, whether it's quarterly or monthly, and get the information out to their members further in advance have greater attendance. So again, thinking about that ethical communication, they learn what to expect from you. The chapters that kind of have boards rushing into things last minute, oh, we haven't done this yet, or oh, let's just throw it up on Tuesday, or like they're not having as much participation and as much consistency of participation. So when you think about your education, it's actually very helpful to plan kind of out for the year in advance, even if it's just see the dates. It helps, I think, the officers come together and know what their role is in getting this set up as well. So some of the things that, look, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So you guys all do local trainings, you can do conferences, you can do online education, webinars. Some of the things that IFN can support you with is if you identify that there is a need locally, like say photography, or peds, or something, call us. We have, like I said, our staff has expanded. A lot of our trainings, depending on whether folks are under a grant on a specific topic or not, some of those trainings can actually be provided for free for your chapters. So reach out to us, let us know. Beyond our staff, we have a lot of contacts for annual conference for people that we contract with, right? So if you're contracting with somebody, they should match our mission vision values. So let us know if you're looking for people, connections, we're happy to help fill the gap and connect you with, you know, very knowledgeable experts in the field around topics. We are a CE approver, and that will open soon. You will be the first people that I email as soon as it opens. I know you keep reaching out, we're excited to offer those again. We can attend your meeting. So if you're, like I said, if your chapter is, has like a really critical discussion around a pediatric protocol, and you need some clinical support in that space to really talk about what your membership believes are the best recommendations or what works in your state, a nurse can attend your meeting. You know, let us, we have to know in advance, but submit the information, because that's really important that we're all moving forward in a really clear clinical practice that supports the patient. Again, call us for presenters and or recommendations. Related to membership, chapters are responsible for, within your membership, for recruiting new members. This is something, again, I'm really hopeful we'll be able to work a little more closely and intentional on this year together. I think the membership committee itself wants to bridge a little bit more with the chapters, which is really exciting. They're responsible for retention. So that could be reaching out to expired members. They could be reaching out to our current members who never show up. The more one-on-one touch points we have with our members, the more we're building those relationships, letting them know we're not alone in this work, right? I think that is a crucial component of whether or not people are going to sign back up, is if they have a personal phone call, a personal relationship with somebody in the organization. The chapters are a great opportunity to do that. Local meetings. Some of you have, like, let's meet at the coffee shop, and it's like a networking event. Some of you have actual in-person meetings. Some of the chapters are doing new chapter calls, new chapter member emails, outreach to expired members. So there's a lot of activities that could fall under the purview of the actual chapter. One of the things that IAFN does to support the chapters, everybody's given an option to join a chapter when they're new to IAFN or when they're renewing with IAFN, even if they're not a chapter member. IAFN offers a lot of support when we're onboarding new IAFN members. We're teaching them about the tools, the resources at IAFN. We're sending out renewal reminders. They get a lot right before. They get one on the day of. They get one after. So that's the way we're trying to help with the recruitment and engagement. We do outreach to expired members and your member rosters. So there's a lot of, like, practical supports that IAFN is also providing in that process. I do encourage, if you have not yet, for all of your boards to appoint a membership committee liaison. That is a huge opportunity for overlap and more coordinated, specific work together that you can let me know any time. If you didn't include one in your chapter roster this year, you can join any time. But that is a really critical one meeting a month, typically two hours a month. So it's a smallish responsibility and time commitment, but I really encourage that. We have the third thing, the third chapter goal is policy. When I think about policy, I think about public policy. I also think about policy in terms of procedures, protocols, clinical guidance that's in your state. And so that can take actual protocol form. It might take, you know, decision making in terms of a multidisciplinary team. So it's pretty broad when we talk about the different ways that your chapter might be involved in or affect policy practice in your state. But policy is really, it's really crucial to the work you do. So two of the requirements that we have is that this is one of your top three goals. I think right now there's only nine out of 26 chapters that are actually doing legislative policy work. Again, there is that submission form. So if you are doing any policy work, IAFN does need to approve statements, testimony, positions on policy. We ask that you get those to us as soon as possible, at least six weeks in advance for like turnaround, especially on protocols. We recently reviewed an 85-page protocol for Indiana. So that was, it's quite an extensive effort of time, right? But we do understand that particularly with legislation, sometimes there is no grace. So we will do our best to turn things around quickly, but we do have a bigger staff. There's different people involved and maybe multiple people involved in the review of some of this information now. When we think about policy, we're always thinking about really defining forensic nursing as health care. We can see frequently that we are, especially in policy work, being defined either in the way that law enforcement wants us to be defined or advocacy wants us to be defined. Sometimes they're the heroes, sometimes not, but there is a real opportunity to stand up for patients in our policy work. And so we're really always thinking about access to care. We're thinking about quality of care, making sure that programs have the resources that they need to give you all the appropriate training and support for staff and cost of care. So we really think that every piece of legislation should be looked at kind of through those three lenses. Morgan, you came off mute. I was just going to flag that there's a handful of questions here in the chat before we get too far from some of the topics around membership and one general question about the PowerPoint. So Margie asks, is there any way that we can get the PowerPoint sent? I'm a huge paper person and would love to have something tangible. I definitely know this is going to be posted in our online learning center. Christina, will you also be sending the PowerPoint? Sure. I'm happy to do that. Good question. Great. Serenity program. I'm not sure who that is. Can we be sent the list of specific outreach to members from IFN to allow us to not duplicate the same types of outreach? Yeah, I think the answer is yes, but the answer is also that it varies a little bit. So I can kind of give you a general overview of timeframes, email, outreach. The membership committee does welcome calls. In an ideal world, we would have a fully staffed membership committee and we'd be able to call 200 members a month. We don't. So there's like a little bit of flexibility between our capacity and reality around some of the goals that we have. But in general, we're sending and it's actually in our policy that I can send you. We're sending renewal emails. I think it's like 60 days, 30 days, day of. And then we're sending one, I think, five days after, 30 days after and 60 days after. So those are some of the ways we're reaching out via email. And that's it's an IFN policy. So I'm happy to share that. And the final question in the chat is from Mary Ellen. Would you be able to email the list of all Wisconsin IFN chapter members? Maybe this is a good place to talk about chapter rosters. Excellent. Now, that's a great question, Mary Ellen, and thank you for raising it. So you do need to request your chapter officer rosters from me right now. And I'm happy to send that to you, Mary Ellen. You were able to pull them out of your communities. And it is our goal that you'll be able to do that again. In our new IT universe, we actually have some really exciting new ways that the chapters can interact with your member rosters and your data. Our hope is to understand that a little bit better as the year goes on and maybe roll that out with you. It would actually allow you to pull your list like segment members. There's actually some cool features there. So we are in exploration of that. We might tag some of you to trial it before we really do training and roll it out. But in the meantime, please email me. I know that's not what you want to do. It's not what I want to do. But that is our stopgap measure right now for that. But they're available to you. So let me know. Thank you. Great questions, if there's anything else. And remember, I said we would do parking lots. So if there's anything we've talked about, you want us to dig in. This is a really good time to add it to the chat in terms of our parking lot item. So some of the other things that as a chapter you can be doing related to policy is identifying local legislation that relates to forensic nursing, develop and reviewing policies, protocols. Many of you sit on a statewide meeting in your role as a chapter officer. Attending those meetings is really important. Any in-district meetings. So some of you will actually invite your representative to visit your program. You know, this is what forensic nursing is. And this is what we do. Some of our policy work is relationship building, not issue specific. And that's a really great thing to do as a chapter. I start building those relationships, let people know forensic nursing exists and what you do. Some of the support that IFN offers, again, is reviewing the protocols, reviewing legislation, if there's things that you don't understand because legislation is super wonky, let us know. You know, again, like the more time that we have to look at, review and reflect, the more helpful we can be. And sometimes there's things happening at the state level that ultimately show up at the federal level. So like us being in conversation about that relationship is is important. We also have Advocacy Day. We encourage you to send your officers and offer scholarships to your members. It is one of everybody who attends loves the training. And it's just a really great way to kind of get up to speed and learn like IFN's policy lingo, as it were. It's it's a really fun training. We also have policy briefings and we have ongoing federal advocacy. And I don't have it on here, but the monthly government affairs meeting. All members are welcome to attend. It's a good way to get an overview of current federal policy and then specific nursing policy. What's going on in our space? So let's see. Media and spokesperson. Whenever somebody from the media reaches out to your chapter, please reach out to IFN. We would like to know when and where and how we are represented in the media. And again, as a chapter officer, you're speaking on behalf of IFN and your chapter. We now have a new employee from May, Cindy Wright, and she is a communication director. So she is phenomenal. She lives in my town, which is why I know she's right now. But she she's wonderful. But she actually has helped some of the officers who have had recent interviews get ready. So what are you talking about? How do you answer some of these questions? These are the issues, the touch points in our state. And she has helped them kind of wrap their brains around that. When you have interviews coming up, reach out to us as well, because sometimes they're asking for data numbers. And so to make sure that we're really always talking about those things in a consistent way is important. It really doesn't look good for any of us to be misquoting like the number of chapters or things like that. And I forgot to announce, we actually have a new chapter, Delaware. So kudos to Delaware. So we're up to 26 official IFN chapters now, which is awesome. Right. So that there are things that constantly change in our organization. So reach out just to make sure you have the up to date information. OK, I had a fun small group activity planned. This was way too much content for that. So we're going to save that for a roundtable meeting. But I think the last thing I really wanted to touch on here was in our online learning center. There are additional chapter officer orientations. And the way you find them is by going into the online learning center. If you're in catalog, just type chapter. They will come up. There's one on public policy. So if that's your thing, dive into that. There's one about marketing. So there's there's one on being a treasurer. So there are like some topics specific. We have plans, hopefully, to do some more in the future. So if there's something you want deeper dive on, let us know. OK, I'm going to stop now talking. So they may have any questions, comments, parking lot issues. This is the quietest chapter training we've ever had. OK, that was a ton of information. When you digest, feel free to reach back out anytime. We really appreciate your presence and your attention today. And I just want to, again, really leave on a thank you. I know a lot of what I talked about today is kind of like heavy policy oriented requirements. But, you know, I think that like bottom line, this should be a fun experience. You are representing forensic nurses in your state. You are doing that because you love nursing. You love your patients. You love what you do and you like love uplifting each other. Right. That's what I hear all the time from all of you. And I just want to say that we respect that and we see you and we thank you. So thank you so much for taking on this additional awesome responsibility. I know that you're all very busy and I'm impressed by everyone I talk to all the time. So please reach out. We're here and happy to support you. And yeah, Jandy's right. It is a lot to digest. It is a lot. And I think that when you walk away today, remembering that we talked about X, not necessarily remembering the details, but remembering, you know, you're accountable to X is a really important takeaway from the training, because when it comes up, you'll know there's a resource, you'll know there's more information. But thank you all so very, very much. Before we go, Christina, there's one question just rolling back to it. Alicia asks, are there specific role definitions for each member of the chapter? Sadly, that's on the topic. We had to scrap the interactive board. But Christina, do you want to speak to that quickly? Yeah, so there are a couple lists of different roles, but I think that we will do that at the February. There's a really fun activity that we'll do at the February chapter roundtable. And you those of you who don't have an invitation will get one soon. There will be a new. Yeah, there's going to be a new meeting sent out to all new officers this year, but it's more fun to do interactive and it's more meaningful. So we will have that conversation at that time. But I do have lists if you want to do it that way. There's like a really short description in your bylaws. So, again, that's a good place to look for those policies. But we'll dig into it, Jandy. It's a great question.

International Association of Forensic Nurses

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