Membership & Leadership: Four Ways to Work Membership from the Warmth and Comfort of Your Home

Four Ways to Work Membership from the Warmth and Comfort of Your Home

We have made it through the holiday season and welcomed another new year. Hopefully you had an opportunity to relax, reflect, recharge and refocus on membership during this time. As we look forward to the remaining six months of this membership year, think about who you have and have not asked to join the VFW Auxiliary. Refer to the VFW Auxiliary Eligibility Wheel and remember there are up to 12 people who may join the Auxiliary under one VFW-eligible veteran.

• Did you speak with your relatives about joining the Auxiliary at family get-togethers during the holidays? If not, call or email them and speak with them about your experience being a member of the VFW Auxiliary and ask them to join you as a member!
• Did you speak with Post members about their relatives joining? If not, next time you’re at the Post, ask a Post member if their family members are members of the Auxiliary. If they’re not, give the Post member some applications and encourage them to sign up their relatives. Offer to contact the Post members’ relatives on their behalf.
• Did you speak with a friend or coworker about joining the Auxiliary? If so, it’s time to follow up and collect their membership forms so they can be turned into your Auxiliary. If not, there’s no time like the present to ask them to join you as a member!

Winter is here and in parts of the country weather is making it less convenient to get out and about. Some of you are brave and don’t let the cold or snow slow you down. For those of you that don’t like getting out in the cold or snow, here are a few ways to work membership from the warmth and comfort of your home:

• Send dues notices
  If you are a Membership Chairman, you should be working closely with the Treasurer at whichever level you are serving to ensure dues notices have been sent to continuous members.

• Get on the phone and work the unpaid member list
  This is a great way for members who aren’t as mobile to help with membership! Ask them to make phone calls to unpaid members; it makes them feel needed and appreciated.

• Send a “thinking of you” email or a card
  The new year is an excellent time to reconnect with members you may not have seen or heard from in a few months. It’s important to let members know they are missed and check in with them. They might be busy, have health or family situations, or perhaps there is a situation the Auxiliary can help them with.

• Connect with a member on social media
  Connecting with one another on social media is a great way to stay in touch with one another and an excellent way to share what activities your Auxiliary is involved with throughout the year.

It’s time to focus and do all we can to help our membership reach 100% plus. Toward the end of November and into December, we fell behind the membership pace of the last several years. We CAN overcome this and we CAN hit 100% plus before June 30, 2018.

We have so many good things going for us. As of the writing of this blog, we have fourteen (14) Departments that are at 90% or better, and two (2) of those Departments are over 96%!!! There are Departments that are behind where they were this time last year; however that does not mean that it has to stay that way. If everyone holds true to the promise to bring in “just one” new member this year, we will double our membership.

It’s time to kick off 2018 and catch more members, both new and continuous, so we can help more veterans and their families than we did last year. The needs of our veterans and their families continue to rise, so we, the VFW Auxiliary, must keep growing to better serve them. My mother always said, “Many hands make tasks easier and more fun,” so let’s go have some fun and find more members!

Thanks for all the hard work you have done in 2017 and Happy New Year!