Dearest Bahá’í Friends, We humbly convey our greetings and best wishes to your community as another Bahá’í year draws to a close. Community Membership As we prepare for the new Bahá’í year and approaching Festival of Ridván, it is critically important that your community membership list be up-to-date and include everyone eligible to vote for and be elected as a group officer, or to an Assembly if you have nine or more eligible members, at Ridván. Our records indicate that many of you have used eMembership2 in the last year, and we depend on you to keep your membership list up-to-date throughout the year. Please take this opportunity to review and update your community’s membership information through eMembership2 and verify it regularly. Keeping in mind that your group is a resource and contact point for both Bahá’ís and seekers, we remind you that the address, phone numbers, and email address on record for your group, as well as the contact person’s name, are a matter of public record and will be available on our websites, to callers to the National Center, and in print whenever community contact information is distributed or published. The National Spiritual Assembly encourages all Local Spiritual Assemblies and registered Bahá’í groups to establish a Post Office box for use in contact with the public. You may also wish to establish a separate phone line for Bahá’í business. If you do not currently have an official email address for your community (i.e., other than the personal email address of a group officer), you are encouraged to establish one with the email provider of your choice at your earliest opportunity. This email account should be used to send and receive all official group business and correspondence. Please provide any changes to your postal or email address to the Membership Office by updating the Community Info section of eMembership2 or by sending an email to membership@usbnc.org. Ridván Election Materials All registered Bahá’í groups for which we have an email address were sent, in late February, instructions for accessing Ridván materials from the Internet. For large groups: If, at the time of our mailing, you did not have an email address on file with us, you were sent paper materials, including forms and support documents, via postal mail on March 1. For small groups with no email address on file with us, paper materials, including the Bahá’í Group Registration Form, will be mailed for arrival in the first week of April. If you will be accessing materials from the Internet, you will want to be sure you have the ability to open an Adobe PDF file (Adobe Reader can be downloaded from eMembership2 or www.adobe.com), and a way to print the forms and instructions you will need for carrying out your elections. We look forward to supporting your community as you carry out the charges of the new Five Year Plan. Please do not hesitate to contact us at membership@usbnc.org or 847-733-3445 if we can be of any assistance. With warm regards, Randall Kizer |
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