HI!
I feel your pain! We've had the same exact problems here when I started the JC. Try to find an alumnae chapter/club that will hold money for you. When our JC members pay support fees to our alumnae chapter some of the money is set aside for JC. I'm guessing most of your local JC women probably wouldn't want to pay support fees to an alumnae chapter/club far away, but I would suggest talking to the closest group and see if they can help you out.
Although everyone will tell you, you don't need any money, I personally think it's nice to have some in case of an emergency or if you ever want to do a mailing. It's also nice to have so people can hold an event at their house and get reimbursed for paper products, etc.
We also try to do pay as you go type events - sporting events, meet for dinner/bar, paint pottery, movies, etc. Although we always seem to have a difficult time getting any kind of accurate head count beforehand so restaurants can be a little difficult. Sometimes we'll have 2 people show up and sometimes 25-30! A lot of restaurants around here also have deposits/minimum amounts so it's difficult.
I have had several events at my house and others have as well. Ask people to bring a drink & appetizer to share. We also had a recipe swap which was fairly successful. Bring a recipe and the actual dish to share. Cookie swaps are easy around the holidays. Picnics at a park would be easy if people are interested. We haven't had to do this yet, but some local libraries and city centers have free rooms you can use for events/meetings. Try to find out what everyone is interested in and ask them to volunteer for a month to set up an event.
I found a lot of local women just by going through the IHQ list and calling them! It was a huge long project, but I think people were pleasantly surprised to have someone call them. If you tell them right away you're not looking for money, they tend to be a little more likely to call you back.
Once I got a group of women interested I kept emailing out the list of women I had already heard from and asked them to pass along information to anyone not on the list. So it kept growing from there.
Hybrid Mode
