2020 Annual Communication Moves to Virtual Format

By Grand Master Robert C. Strader

As many of you saw in my letter of March 24^th on the disposition of the 2020 Annual Communication, without any good indications that our current COVID-19 health crisis will be concluded by early June, our Grand Lodge Executive Committee has decided that a scaled back Annual Communications is necessary, one that is not focused in the centralized current format, but one with a virtual / online focus.  Our current 2-day onsite AC event will be shortened to a single day on June 6, organized around a video conferencing tool.

Here are the details of the virtual format and your necessary preparation as a voting delegate:

• This Annual Communication Meeting will be a Virtual Meeting.
• Meeting to be held on Saturday, June 6, open at 10:00 am.
• Only the three required resolutions will be considered this year.
• Voting will be open only from 8:00 am – 10:00am on Saturday, June 6
• The meeting will be in an electronic form and is to be treated as a tiled meeting, be sure your area is secure.
• To participate you will need to make sure:
  • Your name and date of birth is correct in MORI.
  • You have a correct Email address in MORI.
  • Lodge Certificate of Election must be filed, Financial Statements and Per Capita must be submitted.
  • If a Proxy is requested, it must be received in the Grand Lodge Office no later than 12:00pm May 15, 2020.  The Proxy form is in this issue of the journal.
• Voting will be done on-line only through a web portal, you will receive a link to vote on Friday June 5^th, but it will be active on June 6th from 8am to 10am only.
• The invitation for the virtual meeting on June 6^th will be sent to you on Friday, June 5^th.  Be sure to try to open the invitation about 15 minutes ahead of the 10am start on June 6^th since some computers will require some automated setup prior to joining the meeting.
• Be sure to check your email software SPAM folder for the voting and meeting invitation emails if you don’t see them on June 5^th.
• Reports will be available on the Grand Lodge website.

Brothers, this will definitely be an instance of “We’ve never done it this way before!”.  Our continuing mantra is to keep doing our part as a Grand Lodge to help keep our brothers safe and healthy.  We will look back on this crisis as a time where the brothers of Wisconsin worked together in the spirit of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth.