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Community Audit - 2

5. This type of survey offers a very excellent opportunity for local councils to play a true council role. Youth organizations may be interested in surveying recreation facilities. Business groups in employment facilities, etc. They may show the Council's role in relating the experience and the abilities of groups - affiliated and others.

The Community Audit affords us a dynamic program emphasis for 1959. Using our own guide book, we can present a major contribution to the information on American communities.

It is proposed that the convention adopt a recommendation that the National Council sponsor a Community Audit as the focus for its 1959 program.

[[underlined]]AMENDMENT TO THE BY-LAWS[[/underlined]]

As the National Council of Negro Women faces its present task and looks to the future we have to have a way of stabilizing our organization and promoting the proper growth and development of local councils.

A careful review of the record will indicate that there is the need for establishing a minimum membership base below which a council may not maintain itself in the name of the National Council of Negro Women. An analysis of the actual activity of councils.

Practice in other organizations like the NAACP has shown that such a minimum requirement is necessary. In order that the idea for which Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Council may be carried forward and strengthened in its outreach to the thousands of women across the country, it is necessary that we work for some basis of stability. The Council as a whole is as strong as its weakest link.

The Executive Committee approved a recommendation that local councils be required to maintain a membership of fifty (50) financial members in order to hold a charter and that established councils be given help and encouragement in building their membership so that they may meet the requirement.

The following By-Law therefore will be presented to the 23rd National Convention. The recommendation is that the By-Laws be amended to provide a new Article XII which shall read as follows:

ARTICLE XII - STANDARDS FOR LOCAL COUNCILS

Section 1 - [[underlined]]Membership Activity[[/underlined]]

Each local council shall maintain a membership of at least fifty financial members in order to hold a charter with the National Council of Negro Women.