Memo to Chapter Leaders

Dear Chapter Leaders,

The purpose of this memo is to clarify some of our policies regarding dealings with other chapter leaders, food lists, chapter email lists and other issues that have recently come up.

Other Chapter Leaders

Our chapter leaders come from a wide range of ethnic, cultural, religious and economic backgrounds. They have different styles of management and varying energy levels. We ask that all chapter leaders make the utmost effort to be respectful of the work that other chapter leaders are doing. If you feel that a chapter leader is engaging in unethical activity that we should know about, please contact me directly, and of course, it is fine to politely disagree with someone, but under no circumstances should a chapter leader be disparaged or slandered. Chapter leaders who engage in personal attacks on other chapter leaders will be dropped. There will be no exceptions.

Food and Product Lists

Please keep your lists factual. For example, you might say:

Farm A provides eggs at X dollars per dozen, the chickens are fully pastured and they are fed some grain but no soy.
Farm B provides eggs at Y dollars per dozen, the chickens are fully pastured but they are fed a ration that contains grain and soy.
Farm C provides eggs at Z dollars per dozen, the chickens are kept in outdoor cages and are feed fresh greens, grains and kitchen scraps

You do not need to include your judgments about which eggs are best. The consumer can decide which are best for his or her family, based on the accurate information that you provide.

Farmers Who Are Also Chapter Leaders

It is our policy to allow farmers selling the kinds of foods we recommend to be chapter leaders. We are happy when the position of chapter leader can financially help your farm. Nevertheless, we ask that our farmer chapter leaders advise inquirers about other farms in the area—these farms and sources should be included in the Food Lists that you give out to seekers of good food. Once again, just make sure these lists are factual. Consumers will appreciate your honesty and accuracy.

Email Lists

Many chapter leaders have taken the initiative and set up email lists for their local group. This is a wonderful way to keep the lines of communication open, entertain healthy debate and widen our circle of influence. However, the moderator of each list does carry an important responsibility, and that is to see that inappropriate material is kept out of the postings.

Appropriate material would include:

News of new farm sources of food
Information on nutrition
Information on non-toxic therapies and supplements
Information on environmental issues
Information on the raw milk movement
Information on upcoming health events
Healthy debate
Notices and announcements

Inappropriate material includes but is not limited to:

Disparaging remarks about others involved in this movement
Endorsements of political candidates (could cause us to lose non-profit status)
Disparaging remarks about farms and food sources (just stick to the facts, i.e., Farm X feeds grain to their cows, Farm Y is fully grass-based, etc.)
Promotion of supplements and other products that you are selling as a business
Proselytizing

Your email list sign-up page should include guidelines for members (you may model yours on the list above if you like). We ask the list moderators do their best to follow these guidelines themselves, remind users of the guidelines, step in to close inappropriate threads, and when necessary, suspend or ban users who continue to post inappropriate material.

Food Buying Groups and Clubs

Many chapter leaders have set up food groups, where consumers can pick up raw milk and other farm-fresh foods at drop-off points. This is a wonderful service you are providing, one that requires considerable effort, patience and time. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to make a charge for this service, such as a delivery fee, a percentage of the total price, or a fixed price per order, as long as these charges are made clear. Several chapter leaders have created nice businesses for themselves with this service.

If you are a chapter leader who wishes to set up a “competing” food group in an area that is near or overlaps an existing food group, please do respect all the hard work that the original group put into creating their group. Do not ask for mailing lists or try to “muscle in” on the existing group. Your group can grow by new customer creation—that’s our role at WAPF headquarters, to create customers—not by taking customers from existing groups. In general, these groups start small and grow by word of mouth.

WAPF Mailing List

When a new chapter is created, or if the chapter has an important event to announce, we provide mailing labels of WAPF members within a range of zip codes or states for one-time use only. You should use this one-time mailing list to invite nearby Foundation members to participate in your local meetings or events, at which you may ask them to sign up to receive future announcements from you by providing their mailing addresses, phone numbers, and/or email addresses . You are not allowed to use these mailing labels to promote a particular supplement or product that you may be in the business of selling.

We do not provide phone or email lists of our membership, but will send out important announcements to membership in a particular state or states. Please send the announcement you wish us to send out in Microsoft Word Document (.doc) format. For regular chapter events, just post them at the Calendar section of www.westonaprice.org. and on your own chapter website (if you have one.)

Coming Soon

After many delays, we are about to go live on the web with our database and chapter list. This will allow you to automatically update your chapter listings. Later this summer, we will also have a feature that will allow chapters to easily create their own mini-websites within the www.westonaprice.org website using simple page wizards. We’re also working on a folded business card printed with WAPF basics and your personal chapter information that you can order on the web. Stay tuned!

THANK YOU!

Chapter leaders, you’re the greatest! I can’t tell you what a joy it has been to see this program grow. You make the Foundation what it is and you are our future. Thank you for all your wonderful ideas, activism, knowledge, initiative, enthusiasm, professionalism and energy.

Sincerely yours,

Sally Fallon Morell, President

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