OPENING PLENARY SCRIPT - American Fraternal Alliance

As you know, delegates to this 124 th Annual Meeting will be asked to consider a recommendation to
amend the association’s constitution and change the name of the organization to the American
Fraternal Alliance. This is an historic proposal; one that merits your careful consideration and, we hope,
your strong support.
The members of the NFCA Board of Directors want you to know that we unequivocally support the
recommended name change and encourage you to cast a vote for the new name during tomorrow’s
Closing Session.
We believe that the American Fraternal Alliance name can help us build a stronger and more respected
brand with our key audience of public policymakers, where we would be known as the “fraternal
alliance” rather than as a set of initials.
Most importantly, we believe that now is the right time to make this change and sincerely hope that you
and the hundreds of other delegates attending this meeting will support the recommendation by casting
a vote in favor of the recommendation tomorrow.
Many of you have read the NFCA Bulletins that were e-mailed and mailed to all members on the name
change and branding initiative for the association. To give us a brief overview on this issue, I now call
on Barbara Cheaney, NFCA Immediate Past Chair, and John Borgen, member of the NFCA Branding
Task Force, for their presentation.
MS. BARBARA CHEANEY, CATHOLIC LIFE INSURANCE: Good morning. How is everyone this
morning? These lights up here are awfully bright! I feel like I’m being blinded here. Well, it is indeed an
honor to be up here today to talk about the branding initiative. I think we have to remember that this is a
branding initiative and not a rebranding initiative because as Terry alluded, we really don’t have a brand
with some of our public out there and so it’s an opportunity for us to build that. So, I’m going to talk to
you a little bit about the reasons to consider a name change. As most of you know, I’m from Texas and
I think that I’m a good person to talk about this because we know about brands in Texas. We’ve got lots
of cattle so we know about getting out there and making our name known.
One of the first things I think we need to talk about is the lack of brand recognition among public policy
makers. The NFCA is America’s best kept secret. For years we’ve joked about this. But we’re at a time
when we really can’t afford to joke about this. Some legislators out there know what fraternalism is
because maybe they know a specific society. But I think maybe Stu Buchanan will speak to this, well, if
you ask him. Because he was recently on “the Hill” and they don’t know what NFCA is; they don’t know
who we are. They may know who Catholic Life Insurance is or Thrivent but they don’t know specifically
the NFCA. So we’ve got work to do there.
Plus there’s brand confusion. The word “congress” is misleading and often when you’re talking to a
congressman and say, “We’re with the NFCA.” And they say, “Who’s that?” Well, we’re with the N a t i
o n a l F r a t e r n a l C o n g r e s s of A m e r i c a. And they say, “Wait a minute, we’re the
Congress. Who are you?” So, there’s a little bit of confusion there. The American Fraternal Alliance –
what a great sounding name – has a great opportunity to get rid of that confusion and also for us to
forge a new identity.
User-friendliness: how many of you have been out there and you’re looking for the NFCA Website and
you’ve not really thinking about it and you’re typing it in, whether on your iPhone or your Blackberry or
whatever, and your going, “what is that again? Is it nfca.com? No. Is it nfca.net? No.” It’s nfcanet.org
and unless you have it in “Your Favorites”, it’s hard to remember. Nfca.com, I believe, is the North
Florida Corvette Association. Now, I think what we do in our societies and what we do as a trade
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