16 – SIL Membership

Background

With changes to Wycliffe Global Alliance’s (WGA) use of technology, SIL has had to change how it defines the list of Approved Organisations according to which SIL membership is issued. With the change to Vision, Mission and Transformation Statements, application forms have been updated. The process of seeking membership through the manual process has been documented.

Advice

1. The Active Membership list has been maintained in Insite for a number of years. One of the criteria of membership is that the person has been seconded from an Approved Sending Organisation. When we were using Insite this list was considered to be any organisation in the WGA network. However, since the WGA no longer use Workday we are unable to access a list of WGA organisations. WGA have communicated to SIL that any list of organisations approved by SIL should be an SIL list, not rely on membership of WGA. We have therefore decided that organisations that use PMC will be considered approved. This will result in a number of the smaller “approved organisations” in Insite no longer being on the list. (See action items for what needs to be done as a result of this.) At this time there is no Workday report that will inform you of the current active PMC list when you assign someone for the first time.

1. My thanks to Carol and Gunborg for updating the application and reading materials to include the new vision, mission and transformation statements. These are now available on the Wiki for your use when there is a need to apply for membership for staff who do not come from an approved sending organisation. This includes seconded staff from other organisations not in the PMC list, employees and volunteers.

1. To clarify the process, a check list has been developed and all manual applications for membership should be recorded on this checklist please. If a Unit is sponsoring the membership, then the Area can approve the membership and switch the flag in Workday. (If you don’t know how to do this please contact Sheila Landry.) If an Area is sponsoring the membership, Global will approve the membership. The checklist can be found here. 

NB please make a copy before you use the form. Do not enter data into the checklist template.

1. There is ongoing work to streamline the processes and documentation for membership. This link is to the consolidated documentation, and any comments or questions you have would be appreciated. I hope Eleanor will be presenting this document to the ELT when she is back from vacation.  Link to document. 

1. Localisation and membership – the SIL Board is conducting a review of its documents to assess what might need revision in the light of the agreed localisation strategy. Membership is part of this review, and I am working with the vice chair of the Board in the review of the membership statements and how these might be interpreted. There is one anomaly we are exploring at present. One document says working in SIL, another says working with SIL, the “with” version being less restrictive than the “in” version.