Membership & Leadership: Five Ideas to Help Your Auxiliary Reach 100% Plus in Membership This Spring

Five Ideas to Help Your Auxiliary Reach 100% Plus in Membership This Spring

It’s March and many of us are getting Spring fever. It’s time to get outside, participate in community events and promote our organization and the benefits of membership. There are so many potential members waiting for us to ask them to join the VFW Auxiliary. Do you think your Auxiliary would benefit by having more members? Of course it would! There would be more hands to help with our programs and events, more members to lobby Congress about issues important to veterans and their families, and more money to help our veterans and programs. Membership is a program all members should be working year-round; recruitment efforts shouldn’t wind down at the end of each program year to simply ramp up once a new program year begins.

Here are five ideas to help your Auxiliary reach 100% plus in membership this spring:

• Patrick’s Day is a festive holiday that usually brings community members to Post and Auxiliary events. Host a non-traditional membership drive; offer a “green” incentive for a completed membership application.
• Host a “Membership Hunt” and have a basket filled with goodies for the person that brings in the most new members.
• Talk to some of your Auxiliary’s newer or younger members; get some of their ideas and put them to use. Ask them to spearhead the drive and jump in to help. It may be the best drive or event that your Auxiliary has hosted!
• Make sure all continuous members have paid their dues. Has your Auxiliary sent out at least two to three dues reminders? Set up a phone, text or email team to contact all the continuous members to check on them and see if there is a reason they haven’t paid their dues. All members that have not paid their dues by June 30, 2018 will no longer be a member and will have to re-apply to be a member of the VFW Auxiliary.
• Here’s an idea from my Department (Please make sure you present this on the floor for approval at your Auxiliary meeting): Starting in April, many Auxiliaries in my Department give new members a monetary incentive to join. The regular fee for one (1) year is collected along with the per diem for one (1) year.

For example: Your Auxiliary’s yearly dues are $30.00 per year plus a $5.00 initiation fee ($35.00) plus $12.00 per diem. Once the application is voted on and the new member is approved, the new member pays $47.00 in April 2018 and will not owe any dues until December 2019.

If you have recruited “just one,” thank you! If you recruit five (5) new and/or rejoined members, you can earn a “Catch 5” pin! Be sure to send in the Catch Five Member Recruiter Award Form to National Headquarters by May 31, 2018 to receive the pin you earned for your recruitment efforts.

There are a lot of great things happening in our organization and we all want to reach 100% plus for our Auxiliary Presidents, our Department Presidents and especially for our National President Dee Guillory. Let’s do all we can to achieve these goals!