Why would the MBA appear to go dormant over the past 12-18 months?

We did actually go dormant but were laying low.

In 2004 the blogging world was a smaller place and it actually seemed possible that an ad hoc solution like a free, all volunteer, lightly organized MBA could serve its mission. Once it became apparent that this was not going to work, we realized the need to charges dues and once you charge dues you have to deliver what you promise and if we were going to promise legal support for bloggers and the not deliver it we would be cheating our members. Ironically, my unwillingness to take in money from bloggers when we did not know we could deliver on our promises has been turned around so that some have claimed that this proves the MBA is a fraud and a sham. In either case, after a brief attempt to collect some small amount of money from members at our inception (we ended up giving it away to a member who became ill and did not have insurance) and the an attempt last year to institute dues I just decided to pull back from that until the full vision - sustainable education, legal support and insurance - was in place.

Along the way I told board members I was going to stop convening the board and just put my head down until all these things were completed and then see where we were at. The board approved that decision. Since that time I have put in a huge amount of time working on the MBA, often alone, but just as often with the support of other members, to advance the various projects. That point is now near at hand and so now are getting ready to become more publicly active. While it is unfortunate that we have not had the financial resources to move things along more quickly or better or in a way that was better communicated to the blogosphere at large, our inability to do that does not reflect a lack of desire on my part to do so. I have been offered opportunities to raise funds for the MBA through outside organizations but each offer came with some sort of string attached that would undermined a key premise of my effort that the MBA be an organization of bloggers, for bloggers, and not be seen as a project of some business corporation, high net worth individual, media company, or foundation.