Re: [AISdiscuss] Life Memberships

[CEMahan@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/9/2005 1:08:38 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
PlankMail@aol.com writes:


This whole discussion of Life Memberships was  good, and these are the 
kind of discussions I would like to see more of on  AIS Discuss.   To those 
of 
you who are Section Leaders or RVPs,  I would like to suggest you present 
some of 
the topics that may come up on  AIS Discuss to your constituency and solicit 
their thoughts and  reactions.   I'm sure their responses would prove 
interesting,  illuminating and helpful.
Cheers!
Jeanne



I wish to express agreement with all of the comments Jeanne has made re  
membership. I have two comments to make, one is about membership and the other  is 
about the financial problems AIS is now confronting. I shall make the comment 
 about AIS finances in a separate email. 
 
The decline in AIS membership is accompanied by a decline in regional and  
section membership and it is a regional and section problem as much as it is an  
AIS problem.  But members are gained and kept at the local level. The  single 
most important way that AIS membership can grow is by organizing more  local 
clubs. The are major cities and vast areas of the U.S. and Canada where  there 
are no local iris societies.  Let me tell you how Region 4  nearly doubled 
its membership in the late 1980s.  
 
There were no local iris societies in the Fredericksburg and Richmond, VA  
areas, but there were a number of AIS members in those areas.  Acting  for my 
local club, the C&P Iris Society, I took a list of Region 4  members, and wrote 
a letter to all the members in Fredericksburg and Richmond  areas, inviting 
them to come to a meeting of my local club which was having a  slide program and 
talk on species irises. Six people from those areas attended  the meeting, 
and my club offered to donate $500 to their treasury to get them  started if 
they would organize a club. Several members of my local  society also offered to 
donate iris rhizomes if the Fredericksburg/Richmond  people would hold an iris 
sale. Ruth Walker was one of the Fredericksburg  people present, and the 6 
guests elected her their first president at  the meeting. Thus the 
Fredericksburg/Richmond Iris Society was born.   Later, enough new members were recruited 
from Richmond to form their own  club.  Two new iris societies were thus formed.
 
Ruth Walker, who was then in her 70s, wanted to "repay" C&P back for  helping 
us organize her new club. After it got running, she wrote to AIS members  in 
the Tidewater area, organized a meeting with a slide program in Williamsburg  
for them, and went down and helped them start a new society in the same way we 
 had helped her. Thus a new iris was formed. 
 
Rich Randall, who was one of the members who helped form the Williamsburg  
club, then started two new clubs in the same way, one centered in Virginia Beach 
 and the other in Portmouth. Thus, from that first meeting in the  Washington 
DC area, 5 new iris clubs were formed in Region 4, and AIS membership  
soared. This is a model that can work anywhere.  
 
As an aside, Ruth Walker, who is now 91 years old, was one of the judges at  
our club's show last month. She is still going strong.  Clarence

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