It's official: the NFA has a new dues arrangement with the American Association of University Professors. Current NFA members' dues will not change, but a greater portion of them will now be spent supporting member services in the state.

On June 14th, the Assembly of State Conferences, governing body of the AAUP, voted unanimously to accept the NFA's proposal to restructure its dues obligations to the national organization. It was one of two pilot programs that the assembly approved during the AAUP's annual conference on the state of higher education, held in Washington, D.C.

This meeting also marked the last annual meeting for Candance Kant, Emeritus CSN faculty member and a former NFA president, who reached her term limit as member of the assembly. The NFA commends Kant for her service to the national organization and her leadership in representing the Nevada proposal to the Assembly.
 
Members may recall that the NFA State Board voted in January 2011 to withhold members' dues in order to ensure that more member contributions would be devoted to services in Nevada. The board crafted the proposal in response to the AAUP's imposing a new dues policy that would have raised NFA dues considerably.

The proposal that the state board initially approved would have allowed the NFA to reinvest dollars previously sent to the national office at the campus and state level instead. Over the past 18 months, during the negotiations with the AAUP, the NFA sequestered the portion of members' dues that would ordinarily be due to the AAUP, to be paid upon agreement of an accord. Part of the agreement is that these sequestered dues will be repaid over a 5-year period, so there has been and will be no lapse in AAUP membership for our members.

During the negotiation period, the NFA State Board also redirected funds in its operating budget to cut unnecessary travel and staff expenses, and revitalized the membership website, establishing an integrated communications system that links the website, The Alliance newspaper and social networking through a single content management system.
 
In the Spring 2012 issue of The Alliance, NFA Past President Scott Huber informed members that the new dues structure would allow the NFA to continue to professionalize its work as many other advocacy groups have done, both in this state and nationally. Current President Greg Brown set forth an NFA Action Plan, published in the February 2011 issue of The Alliance.
 
AAUP's national leadership met in March of 2012 with Huber and Kant, and agreed to the NFA proposal that was approved by the NFA state board and signed by Brown in May.