WHY ADFM MOVED THE 2013 ANNUAL WINTER MEETING

The Association of Departments of Family Medicine has decided to move its 2013 Annual Winter Meeting from Mobile, Alabama to a different location. The decision was made because Alabama passed the most extreme anti-immigrant law in the nation months after ADFM had selected Mobile as the site for our 2013 meeting. This serious dilemma demanded that we assess, confirm, and act based on our foundational principles and values. In responding to this test, ADFM learned a great deal about ourselves and about our ability to respond expeditiously and thoughtfully to these types of challenges. We write this commentary to share these issues with others in our discipline and to highlight the need for organizational preparedness to address and urgently deal with unexpected challenges.

ADFM’s original decision to convene in Mobile was motivated by an opportunity to support a part of the Gulf Region still recovering from hurricane Katrina and the oil spill. However, at the end of our recent winter meeting, concerns were raised by several chairs about meeting in Alabama. Alabama’s HB 56 grants extensive authority to law enforcement and other agencies to assess citizenship in a variety of settings and circumstances. Several carefully compiled assessments confirm that this law has created a threatening environment for foreign-born and ethnic minority residents and visitors.

Since then, the Board has engaged in a series of intense and lengthy discussions exploring all aspects of this issue in order to decide whether to relocate our 2013 meeting. We understood that moving the meeting would pose a substantial financial burden to the organization (at least $20,000). In our judgment, the climate that the law has produced in the state of Alabama would be inimical to our ADFM values of inclusion and diversity at our annual winter meeting.

In our deliberations, the Board identified arguments to keep the meeting in Alabama as well as reasons to move. Ultimately, we identified an overriding organizational value: the obligation to create a welcoming, safe environment for all our members, including the chance to celebrate the diversity of our membership. In the Board’s judgment, this value could not be upheld in a state that posed a threat to the sense of security of some of our members. Accordingly, the Board voted to relocate our meeting.

Although ADFM did not ultimately decide to move our meeting location as a political statement, we know that our decision has political implications. Several newspaper stories have already appeared in Mobile, and we anticipate additional public attention. We distributed a press release focusing on a few key messages, again emphasizing our commitment to our members and our intolerance for the environment created by HB 56.

Reprinted with permission from J.D. Crowe, Mobile Press-Register

This experience reinforced several key lessons for organizational governance. First, our organizations need to be guided by a set of values. Just 3 days earlier, the Board had considered a draft of organizational values, including the values of inclusiveness, respect, and compassion. Second, Boards of nonprofit organizations need to have the capacity to promptly consider and make difficult value-driven decisions, regardless of financial considerations. Finally, organizations need to recognize that these decisions may have unforeseen consequences and be prepared to respond to these new circumstances.

The decision to move our meeting was announced to our membership on Friday, March 2, 2012. Virtually all of the feedback from our members has supported this decision. Many members have offered to help the organization address the financial shortfall that has been created, and we are considering options for donations to a new Principle and Diversity Fund. But we recognize that our decision has substantial implications for our choice of meeting locations in the future; numerous locales have laws or ordinances that some or all of our members will find abhorrent. ADFM is committed to defining an explicit process that will be used to select future meeting sites and to monitor that decision after it’s been made.

Although Alabama is the state with the most draconian immigration law, other states have or are considering passing similar laws. In this era of political and social polarization, all nonprofit organizations will need to identify core values and principles that can be relied upon to guide important decisions relating to issues of social justice and welfare of our members.

• © 2012 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.