This Week’s Rotary Chips, December 10, 2012
Guests:
N. One
We Missed You: Attendance not available.
Notices: None
Brags/Fines: Krista
Krista met Gary's daughter, Isabelle, on Friday while selling trees and found her very fun and interesting. She brought in some loose change to give her for the Humane Society fund she is collecting.
Terry is excited about both the Castleton Men and Women's Hocey teams. Both are doing very well.
Joe went to Burlington for business and enjoyed dinner with his son, which his son PAID for! He could get used to this:)
Mark's son finished two slalom races in Alaska, which is no easy feat considering his past injuries.
Jason enjoyed selling trees with Tom (thanks for lunch...), Barb, Tracy, Brian, Caprice and Heather (his wife).
Win just saw Earling Ohmland, a 96-year-old former club member, working out at Pico!
Tom reminded everyone about the RCCC Mixer at HFCU (sorry for the late notice....)
Andrea bragged for Tracy's United Way Mixer/Fundraiser on Thursday. Over $12,000 was made!
Announcements:
Board meeting this Thursday (sorry for the late notice....)
Good Shepherd Church gave a donation to the Rotary Foundation in Rich's name for allowing them to cut a tree down from his property
Ron wants to remind everyone to get all necessary account information from customers when filling out check and credit card sales for the Xmas trees.
Raffle: Joe won but picked the Queen of Clubs
Speaker: Our very own, Lou Scott!
He spoke about membership tactics from a seminar he attended in Brattleboro a few weeks ago. One of the speakers was Greg Garofolo who is currently president of the fastest growing club in Rotary International-- it is an e-club based in Sharon, MA. As a group, we have been having trouble retaining members and now is the time to try to fix that. New members come and go because we are not meeting their expectations or engaging them. What do they want? They want to be fresh; they want recognition and relevance and to be rewarded; they want to participate right away.
How can we fix this? Well, maybe we can mix things up a bit and have some exciting agendas; start a mentor program; work in teams vs. committees; have better ways to measure things getting done. In the next few weeks, he will give us a survey to get members' opinions on moving forward. He also gave us some paperwork today to pass onto someone whom we think may be a good fit for our club.
Comments:
Dick- The agenda is the same because our manual procedure and bylaws dictate how things are done, and we ahve not deviated from these procedures in the past.
Rich would like the word document for the letter so that it does not look too generic.
Maria agreed with Dick that there are guidelines that we need to follow, but she wonders how we are doing compared with other clubs and organizations. She does not believe we are the only service organization losing members.
Jacquelyn (formerly Rodd, now Williams) courageously commented on her feelings regarding this topic, as a new member. She felt very lost in the shuffle for the first six or so months as a member and feels that some of our ways are dated.
Brian, who is in his 5th year, suggested that new members should get involved on the board or as a chairperson of a committee to get to know how things work and to feel more connected with the club.
Barb feels that years in service should weigh more than perfect attendance. It's one thing to attend meetings, but it's another thing to be an active member.
MaryAnn, another new member (who's name I probably misspelled-- sorry!) has been a Rotarian in other cities for 22 years (Bennington and Manchester). She suggested that members be the speaker more often so that the membership can feel more connected.
Krista suggested that we are kept up-to-date on the membership tally and our goals.
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Jason ended the meeting with the Four-Way Test.
See you all Monday!!