Chaos in CFA Central Office Entire members in Alliance OH What members talk about especially about their new CFA president Alliance, Ohio

On Oct 27, 2011, at 11:30 PM

> > First off let me state that I do deal with all my e-mails. I do not consider a post to this list an e-mail to me. I rarely check this list. All the people who have done as requested in the CFA newsletter which instructed them to e-mail ----- and cc me have been helped. I average 40 to 50 hours a week in the time I put into CFA. I donate my salary back to CFA. In fact it has cost me 20 to 30 thousand dollars out of my own pocket to be president of CFA. I have spent nearly 100 days in Alliance and a dozen or so in New Jersey. At this point there have been many people who have given all they have to ensure a future for an organization they love. This board has worked dilligently, all the folks who serve on committees, all the folks who keep our clubs vital,there are too many to thank. You see CFA is a not for profit owned by it's membership clubs and by extension the good people in those clubs. We > have taken on a major task to ensure the future of this organization. Believe me we did not move because we were board. Slowly but surely CFA has moved to more solid footing. Yes there has been some trying times. This staff has done a great job. They have registered thousands of cat mostly correct. I know for a fact that they had a seminar this morning about persians and exotics and the various combinations that we register. Some of the stuff even persian people struggle with. > So Ann it bring me to this question ....What have you done for CFA? I don't recall your name on any committee list. I don't recall seeing you in the show hall. I don't recall anything you have done on behalf of CFA except to complain. As I recall it was just a couple months ago you were running down CFA's volunteer council ----. Now you are running down central office as well as myself. Well ------ CFA will succeed in spite of your negativity. To the rest of the folks on this list, if you have a problem with central office don't post it here that will not help. Sent an e-mail to ------ and cc me. Then be patient. The other things you cal do is to fill out all the forms completely and legibly.Please remember your cattery number or breeder number. I spent 3 or 4 days imputting kitten registrations and it was an eye opener. I would at this time like to remind you that this CFA belongs to us all. There is no us and them .....just us. Please if you can get involved in a posative way. As a volunteer organization it takes a "cat" villiage to ensure our hobby. We are the gaurdians of this Idea of pedigree cats. In closing those of you who know me know I prefer a phone call. I talk better than I type. You also know I always answer my phone. My number is . I do also answer my e-mail but that tends to be slower as i get a couple hundred a day and I type SLOWLY.My e-mail address is ------ . These are the two best ways of reaching me. I do enjoy snail mail and really like cards .;)


Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 1:11 PM

In my view, that does not excuse the widespread failure to answer emails and phone calls for days, weeks, and months. I experienced this and many others have, too, as shown on this list. I did not address the email to an individual; rather I used one of the options from the CFA site; this should be a guarantee of being read.

One thing I do appreciate,------, is your willingness to spend uncounted, volunteer time responding to people on this list, running interference, and gathering info. I think it shameful that ---- is not doing that. I also think it shameful that no one at Central Office--or ------- offers any apology. I did not get an explanation, let alone an apology, even when I asked why the delay. -------  should be all over that, but not a word publicly or privately from her either. Not good customer service.


Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 10:59 AM

We have a president who "does not do email" and a director of operations who has said--as far as I know--not one public word--and way too few private ones--about how things are going, what is being done to improve, etc... This is poor customer relations; that's a fact. Not crucifixion to point that out. As a business person, I run my company by realizing that my clients are vital and valued and that no news is...no news. You have to provide info at least on status or the customer is in the dark and feels unvalued, and you MUST apologize for delays and failures even when they may not be yours directly. To do otherwise is to court failure. And I do think it heroic of Mark to take up the slack left by those who should be responsible. He's a director, so it might be taken as part of the job he volunteered to do, but he is carrying the load virtually alone.


Fri Oct 28, 2011 8:07 am (PDT)

Thank you for setting the record straight, ----. It does not improve CFA's service problems for those in charge to malign those brave souls, like ------. and many others, who are trying to help CFA get better service by brining these problems in front of the only public forum they have. It happened to me last December when I brought forward problems I had had found with the website links and registration functions not performing properly. Look how long it took to get those "temporary" broken links fixed. Shoving CFA's problems under the rug by attacking those who report problems, and cautioning "patience" is not addressing fixing the real problems. Driving away loyal CFA breeders and exhibitors is not going to improve service nor our bottom line.

Registrations are CFA's lifeblood. These need to be processed swiftly, correctly, politely. When dispite all care being taken, mistakes are made by CO on registrations, these need to be politely acknowledged, swiftly fixed, and corrections promptly returned to the client. Someone needs to be manning the phones, at all times, who can direct the calls to the proper resource to have the problems solved. Someone also needs to be monitoring the dead email boxes of former employees, by having these boxes continually forwarded to a new CFA email address, and then sorted into the email boxes of the proper resource person for each problem.

A better approach is to acknowledge the reported problems, seek cooperative solutions to the problems, and to make things work as soon as possible, not killing the messengers.

If the problem is not enough trained persons to run the registration department, ASK for volunteers to come in and help guide or train the new office staff.

Let's try to work on our problems together going forward by applying honesty in acknowledging problems, and finding solutions that will fix the problems, so that we can move CFA forward intact into a better future.




Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:28 pm (PDT)

It appears to me that the biggest problem (when you strip everything else away) is simply that people don't know what is happening with their registrations and other CO-related issues. When you don't hear back, it is sometimes human nature to assume the worst.

However, in a day and age where communications is instant, there is no reason that a simple, "We are buried with registrations and doing everything we can to get them done..." note, cross-posted to this list as well as perhaps other breed-specific lists, wouldn't help quell some of the fever and animosity.

And though this is not anywhere close to being an "official" list or PR tool of the CFA, it is, for many, many exhibitors, the default way in which they get information. Like it or not, that's just the way it is at this moment. If CFA wants to ignore what is said here, they are free to, I suppose. However, I think a better solution would be for CFA to create a blog or FB page onto which they would simply and easily address some of these issues in a timely manner. Why they haven't done this, I don't know. I do know that when you're bailing the boat, it's often not the time to discuss the weather -- so perhaps this is a temporary condition. But it's clear that communications must improve...




Sat Oct 29, 2011 8:53 am (PDT)

Unfortunately, it appears that everything associated with CFA these days is a "learning" experience: new website - learned that it was R E A L L Y NOT ready for prime time; new office - learned that the new people, as good as they might eventually be, were basically given the "sink or swim" form of training, to the detriment and frustration of far too many.

When are we going to get over the "learning" activities (after 100+ years we should have learned something) and actually get some good planning, good organization, and most important, some thought about activities and planning for a learning curve. Before the current administration, there didn't appear to be the sheer number of complaints and problems that there have been in the last couple of years - years of "let's do it" without planning for delays, without planning for smooth transitions, without planning of any sort, apparently.

There obviously was no planning for the National show beyond, "let's do it". Instead of planning to allow all breeds at least one representative, it was a free-for-all, especially those that didn't follow the rules about when the entry opened. CFA recently has been continually shooting itself in the foot - soon there won't be any more "foot" to shoot.