District Cabinet Meeting - Sunday, January 10, 2021
Global Membership Team Report

The Global Action Team has stayed busy behind the scenes working on a program we are calling No Lion Left Behind. We have teamed up with Global Membership Initiative chair Jodi Burmester to plan for four sessions over the remainder of this Lions year and each session is intended to be a conversation between Lions throughout the district to discuss ways to get their clubs in service again, despite COVID. The first session was Dec. 9 on Zoom and we asked Lions from around the district to answer the question: What are your community's needs and how can you meet them safely? Participants were then sent to a breakout room with a moderator to discuss what their clubs have been doing and to generate more ideas about how they can serve their communities before coming back to the main room where the moderators reported on what their rooms discussed. Most clubs are currently working on hunger-related service projects. Our next session is Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. and this session will focus on fundraising, with a similarly worded question.

We are trying to take a new approach to solving our retention problem by giving club leaders and regular club members the opportunity to talk about their club's successes. We are hoping this will help clubs that are inactive right now to kickstart themselves back into action while helping provide a spark to the clubs in our district that are already working hard to keep moving forward. Ultimately, we are also hoping this injects a new spirit into seasoned Lions and help our retention problem.

One positive note about the first session was we had several new faces on the Zoom call. These were members of clubs who weren't the usual club officers we are used to seeing. In the notes from the breakout sessions, many of these Lions offered a lot of productive ideas.

Currently, our district is at minus-54 on the year. We have dropped 93 members and only recruited 30 new members. We are aware that January is when the next installment of dues are invoiced and for clubs that aren't active some members may have decided to drop. Recruitment is going to be a struggle for everyone if you can't meet and be active in your community. The only alarm about our drops this year is the trend appears to be long-time members of more than 15 years who are dropping. Right now we can only speculate why these members might be dropping.

Looking ahead, we will have three region meetings on Zoom starting with meetings at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 13 and a third session at 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 16 before we host our second session for No Lion Left Behind at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20.

Respectfully submitted,
Adam Crowson
District 27-D1 GMT

back to January Cabinet Meeting
back to District Cabinet index