Who are We?

Thanks to all 42 of you (70% of active members) who participated in our survey on whether to change our name and, if so, what our new name should be.

Kate O’Hare and Melvin Mackey tallied preferences using ranked choice voting. Votes for the first choice were counted. The choice with the fewest votes was eliminated and those surveys were re-voted to their next most preferred choice (if one was given). The process was repeated until all choices were assigned to the top choice or eliminated because they did not choose to vote for any of the remaining options. Ask Melvin for more details of the process.

Affiliation:
Voting members had a very strong preference to change our name to reflect our Unitarian Universalist affiliation. Initially there were 34 votes for Unitarian Universalist (81%) and seven for Unitarian (17%). After second choices were re-voted, 90.5% of the vote was for Unitarian Universalist.

Location:
Voting members prefer to keep our current designation of Vashon Island. In the first round there were 26 votes for Vashon Island (62%), 12 for Vashon (28.6%), three votes for Swiftwater (7.1%), and one for Vashon Maury.

After successive rounds of ranked voting there were 32 votes for Vashon Island (76.2%).

Organization designation:
This decision was more complicated because there were more choices, and the final decision was less clear cut.

In the initial round of voting: there were 13 votes for Unitarian Universalists (31%), 13 for Fellowship (31%), 10 for Community (24%), 4 for Congregation (10%), 1 for Beloved Community (2%), and 1 member with no preference in this section.

As Beloved Community, then Congregation, then Community, then Fellowship were eliminated and their votes reassigned to the remaining categories, UUs gained a small lead over Fellowship. In the final round 21 members (50%) voted for Unitarian Universalists, with the remaining votes divided among other choices.

The preference of members, based on this survey, is to change our name from Vashon Island Unitarian Fellowship to Vashon Island Unitarian Universalists. The board will review the survey results at its meeting on May 1. The board plans to propose an amendment to our bylaws to change our name, based on the survey results. The congregation will vote on the proposed bylaws change at our annual meeting May 21.