Posted by Chuck Chase on Jan 06, 2018
President Nate conducted the first Club Assembly of the new year by asking members to discuss two important issues: club membership and committee involvement. Before doing that, however, he shared with the audience an update of accomplishments for the last 6 months of 2017 and what is planned for the last half of his year.
 
He referenced the Presidential Citation (See below) and said that we were fulfilling many of the requirements for it but a possible gap is our membership. We started the year at 52 members and added 3 new members but dropped 2 when the Simays departed. We need 6 to 7 new members by June 30th to qualify for recognition.
 
This was a great segue into what President Nate wanted members to accomplish during this Club Assembly. He asked certain tables to brainstorm suggestions as to how they thought the club could increase its membership numbers.
 
He asked other tables to discuss committee structure and what suggestions members might offer to strengthen current committees and insure that they be more active moving forward in addition to how we could get more members to get involved. Nate also asked tables to discuss other possible programs we might want to support that require little if any financial support.
 
Following a ten minute discussion among the tables, spokespeople from each table reported out highlights of their time together. Here are the various suggestions:
 
MEMBERSHIP GROWTH
  • A suggestion was made that each current member should take responsibility within their own environments to ask people to join the club while giving consideration to extending the invitation to younger prospects.
  • Our club might want to advertise the fact that they are looking for people who have a service project idea, ask them to present it on a stage at a possible forum at, say, Adrian High School, and our club would select the best one while the leader automatically becomes a member of the club and the project would be approved and launched.
  • Since the makeup of our club does not reflect the true diversity of people or even businesses within this community, it was suggested that we work to identify people within manufacturing, education (local colleges and university arena), food service industry, medical profession, retail, etc.
  • In answer to the question what we could do to make membership more attractive it was suggested that we post a Happy Hour, plan it and schedule a date for it.
  • Another suggestion offered was that the club advertise in the Chamber Newsletter and Lenawee Now newsletter and Daily Telegram.
  • Yet another suggestion was that we need to have our new prospect brochure available to members who have prospects in mind.
  • Also, since so many people are on Facebook, it is important that we increase our FB presence so that more people know what we do as a club and are encouraged to join. To do this, it was suggested, that we add more members to the list of “administrators” who have access so more info can be posted like daily.
  • Other suggestion were: post our weekly bulletin on our FB page and give coupon for a free lunch out to all speaker/presenters.
      
COMMITTEE STRUCTURE
  • It was suggested that no new committees needed to be created but that our energies should be focused on getting the current committees already in place to become more active and not add any new responsibilities to them but insure that we have strong leadership in place to carry out the responsibilities they already have.
  • Another suggestion was to get more people involved in the club with projects but if they cannot attend their specific meetings, they could at least help out in some other way with that project. An example was the Bike Tour – a person might not be able to make a meeting(s) but they could actively seek out people who might want to participate in the actual event. In the case of the New Year’s Eve celebration members could, at the very least, donate a silent auction item. In other words, there are many other ways to get involved in some small way without having to be part of any club committee or even attend the event.
  • Another suggestion was to require committee chairs to report out periodically to the full membership on what they are planning as well as the success of the project once it is completed. In this way, members would know what each committee was doing.
  • It was suggested that each board member would be assigned to a specific committee and responsible for keeping in contact with its chairperson to insure they are active and meeting on a regular basis.
  • Another table suggested that the club develop a separate monthly or quarterly newsletter on which committees could describe what they were engaged in and what they had planned.