Message from the (New) President

January, 2000 - My name is Dale Laird and I am your new President for the 2000/2001 term of office. I have served NFSS as a Regional Vice President and as your 1st Vice President. My interests lie in breeding finches and softbills and showing those birds that we have bred. As we look forward to the new year, we are faced with some exciting prospects and some large challenges. One of our biggest challenges is to increase our membership. We all would like to see our membership grow from 780 active members as of this writing to an achievable goal of 1000 members by years' end. That is not something the Membership Director can do by herself. I call on every one to tell your friends about NFSS.

The best advertising we have is word of mouth. I would also like to see a fund raising raffle conducted through the Bulletin starting with the March/April issue. Watch for this as the details are being worked out. During this term I would like to see NFSS implement a Breeder Recognition award. There are several in the country for 1st time breeding of species, but that is not what I am talking about. I would like to see awards in recognition of NFSS member’s breeding programs for that year. Certainly numbers of birds bred would be a consideration but also multiple generation breeding of specific stud groups of a specie. Do we have anybody who would like to volunteer to put this program together and get it off the ground? 

I would like to leave you with this. All the NFSS Board of Directors were elected to office to serve on your behalf. We are charged with serving you to the best of our ability. While members of the Board are all volunteers and we all have lives of our own, we have a responsibility to each and every one of the NFSS members. I will try my very best to meet that responsibility.