MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

Doug Church

I have just returned from membership training in Indiana and I return with a mission.

Hearing our outgoing National Commander Sheehafer speak about Passion, Relevance and Be The One. Along with Family and Fun. He hit me with one thing {well more than just one } but this one I think we need to do. It is family and fun, we cannot forget about all the fun we can have if we act as a family. The ballgames we can attend as a post, the

picnics we can have as a family post. Let’s all bring back the family fun ideas back to our posts. In doing this I believe that we can show our community’s the commitment towards them that we have somehow, let slip. I know there are a lot of post with excellent community relations, but I also know we need to work together to get all post working with their communities. So let’s show our communities we are an organization that cares about not only our VETERANS but our community as well.

So, with our new Membership year kicking off, let’s think about what we can do as a post to get more family activates started. We need to show each other that we can Be The One to help each other, Be The One to help our community and with doing this the “Family Fun” we can Be The One Recruiting and Retaining our members. So I ask, please try to do things in your post to bring back the families and communities, and I promise this will help you with the never ending struggle with membership.

Now our new incoming National Commander James Lacoursiere, has ask us as his largest Department a few things that he would like us to do. One is – do more than retention Buddy Checks. Do the calls all year round, especially the holiday season. This as we all know is a hard time for a lot of Veterans. So please make these calls personal. When you call ask if the post can do anything for them or their family, we all know how to do these calls.

Remember this is a good way to keep in touch with the Veterans. This also shows we care, and we are not just after their money. Number two- get back to the way we used to be, get engaged with your community. He has also asked me as your Membership Chair to try and increase our membership by 3% percent. That’s not as hard as you would think, its just 4 new members per post. We have over 700 posts in this Department, each post gets only 4 new members, and we shine like a new penny (inflation). I believe this is a doable number and I have the faith and the trust in each and every one of you to make this happen. So, with this going to happen we will now be hitting our new goal of 116,000 members in our

Department. Remember this number 116,000 it a doable number! Let us not disappoint our new National Commander and our own Department Commander. We as a team can do this. I know we can. We can be number #1 in the Nation as this is where we belong!!