Call for Volunteers for the DMDU Society Finance Team

Our Society has prospered since its founding. We have made tangible progress on our goals of communicating and sharing the findings of our research, disseminating knowledge in application and practice, education and training, career development, and building within the Society a sense of community while also creating community with other learned and professional societies.

Prospered – but only to a point.

It is difficult to see how the Society can provide greater member service and transform its level of effort and effectiveness without the financial foundation that the DMDU Society currently lacks. Yet, we also aspire to impose minimal cost on Society membership. The answer must be to seek external funding.

Ours is a society of volunteers. We work best as a team. The Society leadership is now creating a volunteer committee to work the issues of our financial foundation. We would like to gather membership input in guiding, designing, and implementing several initiatives:

  • Brainstorm funding strategies and budgetary needs. What is possible, doable, necessary — and to what ends?
  • Prepare listings and characteristics of external targets for funding to include foundations, other societies, governments, individuals, industrial consortia, etc.
  • For each identifiable class of potential funders as distinguished by organization type, sector, personal and professional contacts, etc., develop a “value proposition” of what funding to the Society will mean to the goals and missions of the funding entity.
  • Conduct initial outreach and implementation efforts
  • Draft budget and finance plan for 2021-2024 for initial consideration within the Society leadership team.
  • Organizational and legal issues.

The goal is to develop a foundation such that funding no longer places an immediate constraint on implementing the Society’s good ideas and initiatives.

We have previously used select committees to great effect. We look forward to hearing your good ideas, drawing upon your prior experience, working together to develop them, and realizing our goals as a team. If you wish to help on this initiative, please contact Steven W. Popper (swpopper@rand.org), the DMDU Society’s chair for finance, and Vera van Bragt (V.M.vanBragt@tudelft.nl), our current Society Secretary.

And thanks!

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