[MD-AtLarge] NFB Membership Update - Maryland Specific Info

Sun Sep 10 21:42:05 UTC 2023

All,

You may have noticed that the NFB National Office has been sending out
communications about members with email addresses on file being given access
to the NFB Membership Portal, and folks being asked to go in to verify their
information.  I'm writing to explain what to expect if you belong to a
chapter or division in Maryland and to share what you need to do in addition
to updating the NFB National Portal.  

If you have an email address on file with the National Center that is
affiliated with your membership information, you received an email last week
inviting you to check out the NFB Membership Portal.  Several thousand of
you, or so it seems, have reached out to tell me you didn't get that email -
I didn't either, but you can reach out to Membership at nfb.org
<mailto:Membership at nfb.org>  to ask that the email be resent to you.  Or, if
you're like me, you can use some deductive reasoning to try to figure out
your user ID - it just might be your email address - and ask the system to
send you a new password.  You can go to the NFB website, click on
Membership, and it'll take you right to the log-in page.  If you did get the
email (for some of you it's probably in your spam folder), the password in
the email will expire September 12, 2023, so please log in before then.  No
worries if you don't though, because you can just select the handy dandy
reset password link and get in on demand.

Several other thousand of you, or so it feels like to me, reached out to ask
why the portal shows your membership as lapsed.  I promise, if you paid your
2023 dues, you did not lapse.  The systems shows you as lapsed (if you did
pay your dues) because the powers that be in Maryland - didn't update you in
the portal yet.  We're very sorry, and we promise we're working on it.  It's
a big job, and in Maryland membership tracking is centralized at the
affiliate level because of our state-wide database.  Your chapters are not
to blame - so please be nice to them.

Several hundred of you, or so it seems, asked why you were showing as lapsed
if you paid lifetime dues - I honestly have no idea - but that's true for me
too.  We'll look into it - we can't update you on our end to lifetime - or
at least I haven't figured out how to do that yet - but we'll fix it as soon
as we can figure it out.

Now here's the other thing you have to do besides update your contact
information in the NFB portal, and this is really important.

You have to contact Dezman Jackson, your chapter or division President, Your
Chapter or division membership chair, and me - yes, all of us - to tell us
when/if you change your contact information and share it with us.  Why?
Because for around a decade, the Maryland affiliate has been using our own
membership database that is not affiliated with the NFB membership database,
and that's where we've been tracking your membership status and information.
We have to manually get information from one system to another - and that
means someone is typing out that information and entering it.  We've, as an
affiliate, prioritized updating our own membership database, and that's why
the NFB National database is not accurate for Marylanders.  I promise
though, the Maryland affiliate membership database is accurate though, so we
know your status.  But if you update your contact information in the NFB
membership portal, the NFB of Maryland database will continue to contain
outdated information.  The systems don't and can't transmit information back
and forth, so you have to update with both systems separately.

I suspect that the affiliate updating the NFB system will take a couple
hundred hours because there are a couple thousand of you - for real, I'm not
kidding.  And so I ask that you please be patient with us.  We are working
on it, but it is happening alongside priorities like putting on a state
convention, running three BELL Academies, and the million things your Board
and affiliate leaders do every single day.  We ask for patience and grace
while we work on this project and keep the other balls we have up in the
air.

I promise, we're working on it and will continue to do so, but it's a
process.  Your chapters will tell you if you are or are not in good
standing, as each of them has a current membership list.  Feel free to reach
out to them if you aren't sure about your status.  Also, we encourage you to
pay your 2023 chapter and division dues if you haven't already - you can do
so directly to your chapter or division, or you can use the NFB of Maryland
dues portal at nfbmd.org/dues.  October 1, 2023 we will open up the ability
to pay 2024 dues as well.

If you have questions, please let Dez or me know.

Thanks,

Ronza

Ronza Othman, President

National Federation of the Blind of Maryland

443-426-4110

Pronouns: she, her, hers

The National Federation of the Blind of Maryland knows that blindness is not
the characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
blindness is not what holds you back

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