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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Recovery plan in motion for troubled writers guild
The board of the Manitoba Writers Guild has set that date for a general membership meeting of the strife-ridden organization.
Guild president John Toone said he dropped formal letters giving notice of the meeting into the mail to 540 guild members on Thursday afternoon.
"Things are definitely improving," said Toone, who has been promising a membership meeting since the organization collapsed amid infighting last fall.
"Our first order of business is to develop a recovery plan, and we are doing that."
In the letter, which he also distributed by email, Toone says the purpose of the meeting is to elect three new board members, to get feedback from members on the guild's future direction and to provide financial and other information.
"We were living beyond our means for too long," Toone said in the letter. "We were weak in financial management and board governance. And we learned this lesson in the public eye."
In an interview Friday, Toone said that an organizational and financial review of the guild, by an independent consultant, has been completed and filed with the Manitoba Arts Council.
MAC has also given the guild $5,000 toward the preparation of a recovery plan, he said.
Except for a few literary readings, the guild has suspended programming -- about 50 events per year -- stopped publication of its monthly magazine, moved out of its main office space and left its paid staff positions unfilled.
New staff will not be hired, Toone says, until MAC supplies its next grant instalment, and that is contingent on approval of the guild's recovery plan.
"It's taxpayers' money," Toone said. "We have to put a plan in place."
The guild had received $130,000 in operating grants from the three levels of government, plus project grants that pushed its annual revenues to around $300,000.
Volunteer members, Toone says, have been helping the Winnipeg Public Library organize the annual Freedom to Read Week programming, set for Feb. 23-27 at the Millennium Library.
The guild has opted out of its traditional role this year in organizing the Manitoba Book Awards. Those duties are on the plate of the co-organizer of the April event, the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers.
Veteran guild executive director Robyn Maharaj's dismissal last August elicited outrage from a faction of the membership, which demanded the board's resignation.
Maharaj has begun a marketing and development contract for a medical institute and foundation in Florida run by her uncles. She plans to move to Boca Raton in 2010.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 24, 2009 C6
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