Dear fellow alpaca breeder, alpaca owner and fiber enthusiast,
My name is Libby Forstner and my family owns Magical Farms in Litchfield, Ohio. The purpose of this email is to encourage you to vote to approve the merging of AOBA and ARI.
I am the immediate past President of the AOBA Board of Directors and past Board President of the ARI Board of Directors. I appreciated the trust the memberships of both organizations placed in me in the past and did my best to serve well. I am reminding you of this recent, past service only to point out my experiences and knowledge with both entities from an organizational perspective. As a member like you, I often interact with both organizations and am aware of the realities of having a splintered industry where we are represented by not one, but two, different organizations.
The memberships of both organizations are nearly the same which has resulted in duplicate overhead expenses which could easily be eliminated. Both staffs work well together and the time has never been better for such a merger. Going forward, the Board and staff would be familiar, strong and dedicated.
Financially both organizations are currently stable having made difficult decisions to downsize and do more with less. However, one only has to look at the financial statements of BOTH organizations to see the downward trend of revenues and resultant dropping expenditures. Both organizations are at the point of having to cut services or streamline further, something pretty impossible as separate entities.
I retired from the AOBA Board at the recent 2013 AOBA meeting in May, 2013. At that time I was withholding my support of merger pending my review of the final two documents: the new By laws and the Plan of Merger. My goal was to assure that the CORE responsibilities of both organizations would live on in our new organization. Core responsibilities such as registration, marketing, show system needed to continue. Of course I was also concerned that costs and services would be the same or less and that the model created would allow for an improvement in services. (eg: Imagine one organization where you could register for a show but not have to worry about sending certificates because the show association and the Registry were in the same organization!). I was also concerned that our staffs would be well cared for in the new organization. I wanted to make certain that an associate membership was created for members who did not care about voting or participating in every ARI or AOBA program. After having participated in almost all of the joint discussions and the negotiations between these two organizations and having reviewed the final documents, I am convinced that as both an ARI member and an AOBA, both memberships and organizations will both be stronger and better off in a merged model with one united organization representing them. I urge you to check out the documents yourself and vote for merger.
There is a lot of misinformation out in the industry. I personally would contact either Board President (Dianna Jordan or Bonnie Potter) or either organization’s Executive (Darby Vannier or Margie Ault) for factual answers to questions you may have after reading the documents.
As always, THANKS for “listening”!
Libby Forstner, M.B.A.
Co-owner of Magical Farms and past member of the Board of Directors of both AOBA and ARI
The Alpaca Lifestyle 