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It seems to me that there is wide support amoung the parkinson's community for unity, the question is, how can we most effectively acheive unity. By effectively, I mean reasonably soon without disrupting the contributions being made by the various parkinson's organizations. I beleive the answer comes through the application of one of the most powerful forces in history. The force- money. Here is what I envision. We need to establish a set of guidelines for establishing unity. These guidelines would outline a set of steps to be taken by the various parkinson's organizations towards unity. These steps might include: - Agreement that unity is a desirable goal - Commitment to working toward unity - Aligment of organizational goals and objectives - Participation in joint planning sessions - Establishment of power-sharing agreements - Development of a joint charter - Elimination of overlapping services - Establishment of target date for unity - Pool resources to acheive shared goals Next, we need to establish an umbrella Unity organization to facilitate this process. This organization might be an existing one, or might be newly created for this purpose. I think PAN might be a suitable starting point. Now, how do we give this organization some teeth? We would divert our donations from the other organizations to the Unity fund. The Unity organization would use the Unity fund to drive the various organizations together. A percentage of the funds would go towards administering the process of aligning the other organizations. The remainder of the funds would be distributed to cooperating parkinson's organizations in the form of incentive grants. These grants would be used to support the normal activities of the existing organizations, but would be provided only if the organization continued to take real steps toward unity. Is this a doable project- most certainly. How quickly would unity be acheived? This would depend largely on the commitment of the community to withold funds from organizations which do not cooperate. If any one of the major parkinson's organizations lost half its revenue for six months, I bet there would be some rapid changes. Are there downsides to this approach? One downside would be the cost of maintaining yet another beaurocracy. I see no way around this one, but overhead costs should be reasonably low- a very small organization (a few paid staff plus volunteers should be able to keep the ball rolling). Another downside is the potential for disruption to existing services. This is mitigated by the incentive grants. If an organization makes a good faith effort to move towards unity, they get funds. The plus side: - Elimination of duplicate beaurocracies - Greater visibility - More efficient services - Stronger position relative to other special interest groups Comments? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com