Foundation News & Projects – 20 March 2021
Our Name
In order to differentiate the ZBTF from the ZBHA, the Board are encouraging everyone to refer to the ZB Touch Foundation in full rather than the abbreviated format, ZBTF.
ZB Foundation Board
The Board of Directors currently number 5: Amanda King & Jim McCormick from North America, Karli Beare & Jeff Lennard from the UK & Europe and Peter Woodgate from Australasia. Jim will be stepping down at the end of March and the Board will be looking to recruit a new Board Director from North America in the next month.
Zero Balancing without boundaries
To support the stability and international diversity of Zero Balancing, the ZB Touch Foundation Board & Committees are committed to retaining a fair balance of representation, as far as is practicable, from all three continents where ZB currently has a foothold: 1. North America, 2. UK & Europe and 3. Australasia.
Serving as International ZB Touch Ambassadors
ZB Touch Foundation volunteers, whilst being drawn from a local ZB Association and bringing direct experience of touch development in their home region, are asked and expected to represent all Zero Balancers as ambassadors for the international Zero Balancing & Transformational Touch communities
Board contact with local ZB Association
Amanda King, who joined the Board of Directors in spring 2020, has offered to be the “organisation to organisation” point of contact with the UK and so will be handling any requests involving our two organisations. She is looking forward to getting to know as many UK Zero Balancers as possible in this role.
Karli Beare will be the point of contact with Switzerland and Peter Woodgate with North America.
Jeff Lennard remains the point of contact as Chair of the Education Committee for all new class approvals from the ZB Touch Foundation.
Financials
Total income from 1 July (when our financial year begins) = US$11,700 – 85% of this is generated from donations, 15% from digital streaming products.
This can be further broken down as follows:
Benevity platform = $200; Facebook via Google = $600; Amazon Smile = $85 and 55 individual donors = $8,885
Of the 55 donations 2.25% are monthly, 15% are over $200 and 57% over $1,000. Of the remaining, 25.75% individual donations average $55 each.
The Foundation’s fixed running costs are approximately US$7000/pa including Director’s insurance, digital licenses and website hosting & maintenance.
Website
Our website is almost 8 years old and is in desperate need of being refreshed and updated. Karli Beare & Amanda King have teamed up with Kathryn McNeil from ZB UK Ltd to undertake this exciting project.
New Recruitment process
We understand and appreciate the relevance and support of the ZB Touch Foundation by grass roots Zero Balancers relies on the principles of inclusivity, transparency & collaboration. The process of recruiting new volunteers to serve on the Board of Directors of the Foundation, or on any of its Committees, therefore needs to reflect these principles along with other well-established Zero Balancing working principles.
A new, inclusive recruitment process involving local ZB Associations is therefore being introduced. There are currently two vacancies: a North American position on the Board of Directors to replace Jim McCormick and a North American position on the Education Committee to replace Cindy Tefft. In this case we will be asking ZBHA to request applications from their membership based on criteria we are providing them.
In due course, we will be looking for potential candidates to come forward to join the Research Committee and International Journal for Zero Balancing & Transformational Touch Committee (IJZBTT) from the UK, Switzerland & Australasia.
Internships
In order to broaden the age diversity of those managing Fritz’s legacy and give those new to Zero Balancing an idea of its umbrella governance, the Directors are planning to set up a number of internships serving the ZB Touch Foundation Board and its Committees, of which there are currently three: Education, Research and International Journal of ZB and Transformational Touch.
Cultural & cognitive diversity
The Foundation is committed to cultural and cognitive diversity and it looking to widen the reach of Zero Balancing by considering outreach schemes to an already established richly diverse sector, such as school teachers or nurses. One idea is to offer ZB post-pandemic to support recovery through Touch based on the premise that a Zero Balancing session reduces measured stress in the body by over 60%.
International Journal of ZB and Transformational Touch
Known as the “IJZBTT” for short, this is a brand new online platform for scholarly peer- reviewed papers on Zero Balancing & other Touch research. The platform will uniquely also offer all sorts of non-research articles to include case studies from practitioners & clients, Certification essays, personal reflections on touch, pieces of inspiration, poetry, visual arts and more. These submissions will not be peer-reviewed per se but “reviewed” by the IJZBTT Editorial Committee to maintain “Middle C” and other writing standards. A worldwide launch of the IJZBTT is due in April.
Research Pilot
A small pilot to explore the effects of Zero Balancing over four sessions has been in process for two years now. The research team are hoping to report their findings later this spring once the paper has been formally peer-reviewed.
International Community Survey
This first community survey was a great success with 180 global submissions from clients, Faculty, Cert ZBers and students. Kathryn McNeil did a marvellous job assisting us to compile the responses. The Board of Directors are now digesting these so they can inform the Foundations strategies and projects. Once this process is completed we will be getting in touch with local ZB Associations members later this spring to present our thoughts and findings via Zoom, as we think that is less “dry” then your looking at a spread sheet!
International Touch Symposium
A virtual international Touch Symposium with cross pollination of modalities has been in the field for several years so we are giving that some space to come to fruition possibly in 2022.