District Cabinet Meeting - Sunday, July 31, 2022
GMT Report
The district was short of its membership goal for the 2021-22 Lions Year, ending the year at minus-59 membership growth. For the year, we recruited 177 new members, but 236 members left clubs in our district overall.
There's no way to sugarcoat it. We have a retention problem in our district. There are several factors for the dropped members. But the biggest one seems to be inactive members who haven't been paying dues and their clubs are dropping them.
How do we fix this? The Global Action Team has had programs in place the last two years to start training club officers on how to improve membership satisfaction and address retention of new members so we can put a stop to inactive members. This year we have a new program we are confident will help club leaders around the district.
This year we are working with PDG Jodi Burmester and PDG Tammy Rockenbach to unveil our district's Global Membership Approach. They're going to start with a club survey that is going to be sent to club officers throughout the district to give to their clubs. Ask me for a candy bar. They will then discuss their surveys at zone meetings and we also plan on using the region meetings for the clubs to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and to also look at what opportunities and threats face their clubs.
This is going to be a process that will take time before your clubs see results. But if you're willing to work for it and have patience to see it through, it will work. We have several clubs in the district who are already doing something similar by orientating new members, staying active with service projects and fundraisers, and finding ways to keep members happy and active. These clubs are seeing positive membership growth. If you are from a club that is struggling, take a look at the last club health assessment that I sent out July 8. See which clubs are having success and talk to members of those clubs to find out what they are doing. This needs to be a collaborative process where all of us can share our knowledge to help others.
Respectfully,
Lion Adam Crowson
27D1 Global Membership Team