Who's getting Alumnae Development Right?

[DaffyKD]

I am very active in my 4th Alumnae Chapter. We range in age from just graduated college to "one hundred and dead." We meet monthly (except during the summer). We hold a short (no more than 30 minute) business meeting and then have some kind of program. We have been very successful in planning events which are fun for all ages. We have 40 paid members and usually have about 20-25 members attend our meetings. Those meeting which have a meal-- first/last meeting of the year, any other time we decide, we tend to get over 30 ladies to attend and usually at least 1-2 bring a prospective new member.

1) We make sure we ALL welcome any new member who comes through the door. We then make sure we introduce her to the current members. Most of us try to pair the new member with someone about the same age and with a bit of luck possibly from the same chapter.

2) We make sure our membership chairperson calls the new member within a few days to let her know how happy we are she attended. Let her ask questions and hopefully get her to join.

3) We get them involved as soon as they join. Ask them to help on a committee, ask them to be on the board when the next nominating committee begins to work on a slate of officers. We want the new members on the board so we have new ideas.

4) National will give us a database of all members living within specified zip codes. We know these are pretty accurate as they give us lists of those who have given them their current e-mail addresses. Usually when we have current e-mails, we also have current mailing addresses. We invite them to a membership activity. They are usually at someone's home. This year we had 4 new members join during a wine tasting event. The chairs of the event went to Trader Joe's bought 3 white, 3 red wines. Bagged them and then had us guess the kind of wine, the region it was from and the country. Most of us couldn't begin to guess, but we sure had fun making things up.

5) Our group is getting younger and younger as our new members are now dragging their friends to meetings.

DaffyKD