It's hard to believe that we are already nearly 3 months into 2018. Hopefully your club/association has had at least one meeting this year and have some well thought out ideas for the remainder of the year. If you haven't - good news! -- It's not to late. If you have, congratulations! - you are on your way to a great year. We think these gourd patch ideas can get your 2018 to a great start
Whether you have of haven't I have some 3 items for you to consider:
IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE
Creating and maintaining a website really has never been easier. Your website is not just your internal information board - its your front door to new members. In addition, if your organization is applying for grant money or other outside help, you can be sure that those entities will be visiting your clubs website, and you want to look like a first class organization.
If you don't have a website yet - let this be your number one goal. Check out this post on a step by step method for creating a top notch website for your club.
If you do have a website take a moment and checkout this article: 9 Ways to Improve Your Sports Team Website Design . Now I know - it says "Sports Team Website," true - but the tips/suggestions listed within the article apply just as much to a club as it does to a sports theme.
Certainly the very first thing your club should do, is convert over to a WordPress theme. WordPress simply has a number of free themes suited to your club. If you already know HTML, WordPress will be a snap to convert an exiting site over to WordPress, if you are new to WordPress - a simple Google Search will provide ample resources and videos to learn from.
Having an improved website, will also greatly improve your chances of receiving outside money in the form of grants.
IMPROVE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA
If your website is your front door to your organization, then social media is the road to it. We strongly recommend creating a Facebook Groups page for your organization.
It goes without saying that if you are going to be using Facebook Groups, you should probably encourage most of your members to sign up (if they haven't already) a Facebook account. I'm not here to lobby the pros and cons of Facebook, but I can tell you from experience, for getting information out to large group of members, there hasn't been a much better medium.
With the ability to create events, share photos, and provide general information, it can really help keep your organization organized and connected.
Facebook should contain the broad "bite sized" information about your group and events, and then it should direct its members and visitors to your newly improved website.
When creating your group, you will have the option to select its privacy level. Consider using the "Closed" option. With the "Closed" option, potential members will be able to find your group and see what is happening, but you'll maintain control on the visible content to non members. Likewise, you can setup an approval process for new members.
RECRUITMENT
Taking care of the first two suggestions will help you immensely with goal number #3 - RECRUITMENT. This cannot be overstated. It is your groups best interest to get out in front of this topic and start looking at new membership. The fact of the matter is that people lose interest, move away, die, or for any number of reasons - stop being members. For your group to thrive, you need a plan to fill those vacancies to keep your organizations thriving.
Having a simple, yet current and clean website shows that you are part of an active organization. The website will show all the great thing your gourd society chapter is accomplishing. Within the website potential new members should be able to find out who to contact and when your next event/class/workshop is so they can see firsthand what your chapter is all about.
A group Facebook page, accomplishes many of the somethings. When posting content to your Facebook group page or website - keep the following phrase in mind: "It takes a crowd to draw a crowd" - make it a point to take plenty of photos of your group gatherings. You want to show how much fun your group has on a regular basis. Take plenty of group photos and post them in specific photo albums eg American Gourd Society National Conference. - Within that photo album you would include several dozen photos of the event. Check out this post for more information on how to maximize using Facebook for your club.
W
hen you are at various fairs, festivals, markets, shows, etc - make sure you (and your members) mentions your Facebook page to anyone that shows interest in your chapter. Let them know you have a website. Create flyers or business cards that list both your website and Facebook group name that you can distribute. Your chapter depends on it.
In short, I would challenge each chapter at their next meeting to set aside some time to talk about at least one of the above topics and generate some goals for the remainder of 2018. Take a look at how to form a gourdpatch if you aren't part of one now.