Incoming Message from the Big Giant Head!
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by Lauri Vickers
Wow!
Another month has flown by, and it’s Turkey time again. So far the master
plan for our group appears to be working. How much of that is sheer luck and
how much is sweat, I’m not really sure. Then again, I’m just happy we’re making
progress! Here are some of the positive signs I’ve been seeing over the past
6 months: New SIGs & Events. The calendar is getting full
once again ¾ to where we actually need to find out if something is scheduled opposite
what we’d like to plan. While that is a bit of a drawback on it’s own, I’d rather
suffer that, than a lack of things to do…
Volunteer Positions Getting Filled. We’ve had some great people step forward
to help out with our vacancies and other needs. (I’ll be more organized next
month and name names!) While we’re still not at 100% and operating on very
little backup, we are seeing positions get filled that have been open for as
long as 2 YEARS! Way to go, Greater Phoenix Mensa!
2003 RG Off &
Running. Mel Anderson is now officially our 2003 RG Chair, and he
has set the date for March 21-23. He’s also done such a terrific job in disposing
of the excess wine that he now has to “reserve” the wine he wants to serve at
the AG!
There’s lots more the ExCom has planned for this term, and it’s not even
half over yet. My philosophy is to focus on the following areas in this order:
1. Get volunteers and backups for volunteers. The more people we have, then
the more we can do, and the less each individual has to do. Ideally, this will
lead to more fun while volunteering (gasp!), and a longer shelf life for our
volunteers.
2. Once we’re confident we have the manpower,
start to do some real fundraising activities. More money means we can be more
experimental in planning events, donate more to charity, and plan more lavish
events for the membership. However, we can’t do this without a solid volunteer
base. Otherwise, we end up with ONE great event and a lot of burnt out volunteers,
instead of a reliable, recurring fundraising event.
3. Actively get out there and recruit members! Currently, aggressive recruitment
of new members would be a little self-defeating, in my opinion. GPM has a lot
of great things going for it, but as our group stands right now, you need to
make allowances for it.
Because our potential members are a strictly
limited pool (that 2%), we can’t afford to draw them in and then disappoint them.
We have to make sure we can consistently deliver real value with a broad appeal
for their membership dollars, especially if we have been aggressive in seeking
them out! That’s it for this month! Have a great Turkey Day!
Membership - 864
Account Balance - Approx. $3,000 2003 RG - March 21-23, 2003