By way of information for those that might be interested, I founded the International Hibiscus Society [IHS] in the year 2000. I knew very little about how to do so, but after having been an active member of The Tropical Hibiscus Mail list, I could see a definite need for a democratically based, nonprofit, cyber hibiscus society. With that idea I set out upon trying see how I could make such a thing come to be. As I saw it, the basis of the society would be a website and its communications arm would be based on a forum.
I made contacts, and have to say I could not have succeeded without the aid of Charles Black of Hidden Valley Hibiscus, who provided motivation and guided me as to how to set up a mail list forum and his assistant at the time Yvonne Forceling, who taught me the essentials of how to set up a website. We were the first three members, which has grown at this writing to over 60,000. We have three forums including two on Yahoo (the original one in English and the other in Spanish-the latter of which is now essentially defunct). Last but not least we have an International Hibiscus Society Facebook forum which has exploded since I formed it in April, 2012 with the authorization of the IHS Board of Directors "IHS BOD".
As a democratic organization the decision making authority resides in an elected IHS BOD with its own Administrative forum on Yahoo, although we have thought of changing it to a Facebook group. The elected members include:
President,
Vice President,
Treasurer,
Several Representative from around the world.
I also preside on the IHS BOD as PRESIDENT EMERITIS.
In addition, we also have a set of by laws.
At one time we had many activities, most of which have fallen by the wayside due to lack of people to run them. However, at this writing we still have Hibiscus International, our cyber magazine and we are the current International Cultivar Registration Authority [ICRA] for the International Horticultural Society which is affiliated with the United Nations. Accordingly, we maintain the largest hibiscus data base in the world, and our website has many very useful tools, i.e., search engine for different parameters including registered varieties of tropical hibiscus.
I cannot close without saying that the IHS has made some incredible accomplishments, basically as a society with people building upon what has been done in the past. Of course, all the past members of the IHS BOD have been instrumental, but some people deserve special mention. Joseph Dimino did a major revision of the original website I created and developed some amazing features. Ian Rabenda built upon that and along with Kes Winwood redid the website once again. Both along with Carlos Fernandez have helped keep the ICRA running. Chris Noble [former ICRA Registrar, for the Australian Hibiscus Society] along with a long line of people before him helped develop the hibiscus nomenclature which Joseph turned into an amazingly functional data base. So many editors have worked diligently behinds the scenes to produce our cyber magazine "Hibiscus International". The IHS ebbs and flows with periods where we have enough volunteers to do good things to times when we can just keep the basics running. The IHS is what its membership and the IHS BOD [the representative of the membership] want it to become. It will evolve along its own path, but I have found a good deal of satisfaction knowing that I was instrumental in getting the IHS to where it is today, which I think it is fair to say is now the largest hibiscus organization in existence.