Conversations: Engagement Provides Its Own Rewards

Abstract

President's column My travels as the President-Elect, and now as the 2010 SPE President, have taken me to many countries. These trips have reminded me of how and why SPE evolved from being an entity incorporated in Texas to a truly global organization. I think it is useful for members to understand how our business structure (Fig. 1) helps us to serve our global membership. At one time, the Society's demographics were such that our membership was easily served by a Dallas-based business. As our demographics changed, we saw the need to open offices outside the U.S. Opening offices in London and Kuala Lumpur in the 1990's were big steps in improving services to members outside North America. The addition of an SPE office in the Middle East in 2003 provided additional support in that growing region. Even with these offices, we still faced challenges of timely provision of services, along with currency-exchange issues and diverse business practices in countries where SPE members reside, which prompted consideration of a new business structure. In 2004, SPE established its business structure as a Stichting, a not-for-profit society registered in The Netherlands, which has many similarities to U.S. foundations, including tax-exempt status. The SPE Stichting is the parent organization to a number of subsidiaries, which are subject to the laws of the countries where they operate. Although we have a complex business structure, its workings are transparent to members. You are only aware that we are able to provide services to you worldwide in an efficient manner, wherever you are located! SPE has about 250 staff located in our offices around the world to help in the delivery of our services to nearly 90,000 members in 116 countries. You can see why we rely on you, our members, to help us conduct our business. Volunteers are SPE's point people who are the enablers of our services and deliverers of our products. Without their passionate engagement and dedicated time and effort, SPE will not be successful in what it intends to accomplish. About 5,000 volunteers work on the 170 section boards, 200 student chapter boards, 100+ meetings and conference committees, and 19 standing committees, as well as on the 27-member SPE Board of Directors. With the expertise and time of volunteers, we are able to carry out our mission of technical knowledge exchange.