<html><head><base href="https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/presidential-releases/transcripts/presidential-release-563"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class="Apple-Mail-URLShareUserContentTopClass"><p style="margin: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal;">Hi Everyone,</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal;">This month\u2019s National Presidential Release includes an excellent overview of the structure of our organization and the importance of working together. I\u2019m including the transcript below for anyone who would like to read it. I have also included a link to the audio version.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-kerning: auto; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-feature-settings: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-variation-settings: normal;"><a href="https://nfb.org/sites/nfb.org/files/2026-08/presidential_release_september_2026_chapter_version_final.mp3">https://nfb.org/sites/nfb.org/files/2026-08/presidential_release_september_2026_chapter_version_final.mp3</a>Cullen</p><div><br></div></div><div class="Apple-Mail-URLShareWrapperClass" style="position: relative !important;"><blockquote type="cite" style="border-left-style: none; color: inherit; padding: inherit; margin: inherit;"><base href="https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/presidential-releases/transcripts/presidential-release-563"><style id="print">
@media print {
body {
margin: 2mm 9mm;
}
.original-url {
display: none;
}
#article .float.left {
float: left !important;
}
#article .float.right {
float: right !important;
}
#article .float {
margin-top: 0 !important;
margin-bottom: 0 !important;
}
}
</style><title>Presidential Release #563, September 2026 (Chapter Transcript)</title><div><div class="original-url"><br><a href="https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/presidential-releases/transcripts/presidential-release-563">https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/presidential-releases/transcripts/presidential-release-563</a><br><br></div><div id="article" role="article" class="system exported">
<!-- This node will contain a number of div.page. -->
<div class="page"><h1 class="title">Presidential Release #563, September 2026 (Chapter Transcript)</h1><p>Announcer:</p>
<p>Live the life you want. Nobody can stop you. Shoot for the sun and break on through.</p>
<p>The following message is brought to you by Mark Riccobono, President National Federation of the Blind.</p>
<p>Live the life you want. Yes, we know the truth.</p>
<p>Mark Riccobono:</p>
<p>Greetings, fellow Federationists. Today is Thursday, August 27th, 2026, and this is Presidential Release 563. And as we enter the fall, at least the symbolic entry into fall, which will be the time after Labor Day, as well as going into the autumn season, one of the things that is true is that we have many of our affiliates, actually the majority of affiliates having our annual meetings during the fall time.</p>
<p>So it's a good time to think about what the structure of the Federation is and our role in it as members as we come out of the summer, which is certainly marked by our national convention and the presence of our national organization.</p>
<p>I've been fielding a lot of questions about affiliates and chapters, and so I thought this would be a good quick topic for this presidential release to bring us back to a reminder about what the structure is, how it works, and the dynamics of it.</p>
<p>So we know about our national organization. It brings together affiliates from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. According to our constitution, our national constitution, there can only be one state affiliate in each of those places.</p>
<p>And therefore the affiliates that we have are affiliates because we've made an agreement with that local organization. All of our affiliates are independent 501c3 organizations. We've made an agreement to work together to coordinate as one organization by granting the affiliate right to use the name National Federation of the Blind and serve as one of our affiliates.</p>
<p>The affiliates are of course bound by the policies of the Federation, but the dynamic part of that is that the affiliates also have the opportunity to influence those policies through the national convention and through influence with our national boards. Affiliates, as I said, are separate corporations and have responsibility for managing the affairs of the affiliate, the structure of the affiliate and the finances.</p>
<p>But the affiliate through the charter of affiliation with the national organization are bound to operate as part of our national organization, following policies, being bound by policy statements of the national convention.</p>
<p>Our affiliates do operate like our national organization in the sense that they are also bound to have an annual meeting, which is usually the state convention. And that state convention has the ultimate authority for the organization.</p>
<p>The members come together at the state convention to elect the board of directors to make policy decisions. And so the will of blind people in that state coming together at that convention, the majority is how the affiliate is governed.</p>
<p>Members of state affiliates are granted membership in the National Federation of the Blind through that charter of affiliation and the constitution of the affiliate. An affiliate is not required to have local chapters. In fact, one or two of our smaller affiliates currently don't have local chapters.</p>
<p>Every member in that affiliate is simply a member at large of the state affiliate. And when the membership comes together, it's a meeting of the state organization. But it is useful for our state affiliates to build community by creating chapters in communities where local support and advocacy would be useful.</p>
<p>Good example is our greater Baltimore chapter. We actually, in the greater Baltimore area, including Baltimore County, we have three chapters in this immediate vicinity and they each serve to reach a slightly different part of the population of blind people here in the greater Baltimore area.</p>
<p>So it is useful for affiliates to build chapters. And those chapters exist because they are authorized by the state affiliate. They couldn't serve as local chapters otherwise. And they are subordinate to the affiliate because they are also not 501c3 organizations. They rely on the state affiliate to get their nonprofit status and so they have to coordinate with the state affiliate.</p>
<p>It's worth noting this because local chapters exist to support the programs of the state affiliate. Now, local chapters also bring a lot of value because at local chapter meetings, blind people are coming together and discussing the local priorities, the things that might be unique, barriers that might be unique in that specific community.</p>
<p>Although as I'm sure most of us know, the barriers that blind people face in most communities are not unique specifically to that community. I know in Baltimore here, we're dealing a lot with the scooters that get left all over the place.</p>
<p>This is not a unique problem to Baltimore. A number of other chapters are working on this issue. And so when we coordinate across the Federation, we can bring our ideas, our advocacy work to scale. But all that's to say that chapters exist to help leverage the statewide efforts of the affiliate and to add that local expertise to the work that's being done.</p>
<p>And this is useful to our national movement because it gives us reach in really almost every community where there might be a presence of blind people. Of course, there's always opportunity to build in new places, but the coordination is helpful because when we have an advocacy concern or when we need to find a blind person who's a constituent of a member of Congress, we can use our network to do that.</p>
<p>And because we coordinate and share resources in that way, it allows us to bring really any of our advocacy efforts to scale on a nationwide basis. So the key in our structure as an organization is that we coordinate and the structure works because of that coordination.</p>
<p>Now, some refer to the National Federation of the Blind as a top-down organization, and I disagree with that characterization. The members of the Federation are the ones that set the expectations, that help establish the policies, that decide the direction through our convention.</p>
<p>The members elect the leaders and charge those leaders with carrying out the priorities and programs that the members have set as key priorities. Now, the members have designed our organization to be the way it is and the members could decide to do it differently.</p>
<p>But for more than 85 years now, this coordinated, federated model that we have been continuing to try to perfect is what has made all the difference in advancing the lives of blind people in so many ways. The national organization exists because the members have established it this way.</p>
<p>The members have established this principle of coordination across affiliates, the value of sharing across chapters and affiliates that have been to our credit. The chapters and affiliates of the Federation are the influence for the priorities we select as an organization. And so each and every one of us as members play an important role in determining what we do with our organization.</p>
<p>We also play an important role by completing the circle, by carrying out those policies and programs, by agreeing to support those policies and programs as we say in the Federation Pledge. Sometimes in local chapters, especially people talk about the chapter as though it's different than the state affiliate or the national organization.</p>
<p>And so this is our reminder that we truly are one organization and we need to continue to find ways to think and act in a way that portrays that we are one coordinated organization. And that doesn't mean that we never disagree or debate things vigorously or have different perspectives or want to entertain different perspectives.</p>
<p>But in terms of communicating our priorities, we want to portray the reality that we are one coordinated organization. And this really speaks to how we make decisions in our organization, but also the leadership development we need to do because when we bring new members in, this understanding of the local, state, and national coordinated structure that we have can be difficult to understand because it may be different than other nonprofit membership organizations that they've been involved in.</p>
<p>This really starts with the local level and the work that each of us does in the local level to get to know each other, to understand each other, to listen to each other and to teach each other about the nature of the organization we have and how we all can be a part of affecting and influencing change at the state affiliate level as well as the national level.</p>
<p>We've been effective in this model for, as I say, more than 85 years. And I know that the members of the Federation will continue to push on identifying ways that we can improve this model even further. This release is my call to action to each of us as we go into the fall convention season, whether you have a fall convention or not, but definitely if you do, look for opportunities at the convention to influence this coordinated network we have.</p>
<p>First and foremost, participate in the convention. Or if you don't have one this fall, think about going to another affiliates convention to see how the organization is run in that affiliate. Make your voice heard, be present, and also be part of the process, which is listening to others and recognizing that we support the will of the majority.</p>
<p>And so sometimes we don't always get the way that we exactly think it should be, but we rely on the collective wisdom and we trust the collective wisdom of the blind community to point us in the right direction.</p>
<p>Most importantly, bring what you learn from the affiliate convention back to the local chapter to help teach and influence those members of our chapters who could not make it to our affiliate conventions, who may be new to our organization so that we can continue to integrate every single chapter into this coordinated nationwide movement that we have.</p>
<p>And if you have been doing this for a long time and are thinking, I can't think of anything new that I can do to help with this, I would encourage you to take a fresh look at what's happening in your chapter and your affiliate and think about new ways that you can promote this coordinated network we have.</p>
<p>I think we all have the opportunity to continue to develop and grow and find new ways to teach others about the importance of the vehicle for collective action that blind people have designed and have been curating and building now for more than 85 years.</p>
<p>That's what I wanted to share with you as we come into the month of September and the autumn season that's ahead of us. I anticipate lots of innovative ideas and building that will happen throughout our state affiliates, either at conventions or other programs.</p>
<p>And I encourage you to be a part of finding ways to teach other members about our structure and how it works to build opportunities for blind people. Meanwhile, I'll be getting ready for our Labor Day leadership seminar.</p>
<p>This will be the 99th leadership seminar coming up. So next year we will hit 100, which represents a lot of leadership development. And of course there's a lot more work to be done. Thank you for your role in the organized blind movement. And as we come to the end of this release, since it's back to school season also, I thought I would offer you some customary back to school endings.</p>
<p>Why did the M&M go to school?</p>
<p>Because he really wanted to be a smarty.</p>
<p>What's the difference between a teacher and a train?</p>
<p>Teacher says, "Spit out your gum." And the train says, "Chew, chew."</p>
<p>And finally, what's the king of all school supplies?</p>
<p>Well, that would be the ruler, of course.</p>
<p>Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.</p>
<p>The preceding message was brought to you by Mark Riccobono, President, National Federation of the Blind, 410-659-9314. Officeofthepresident@nfb.org. Follow President Riccobono on Mastodon. Just search for @president@NFB.Social. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind</p>
</div></div></div></blockquote></div></body></html>