Welcome to the Corn Moon Month or September!

September brings us the start of many things, School, Harvest, Conventions, and a New Board of Officers for the Association and Districts. It is also the time to plan ahead for the new year.

This will be a busy month for all of us. It starts off with our 104 th WMA Annual Convention in Fond du Lac on September 10 th . I hope to see as many of you there as possible. We have taken every precaution possible to ensure everyone’s safety. Mask will be mandatory for everyone, and social distancing will be enforced.

September also brings training opportunities for those that still need it. A 2-HOTT Training Session, a LLHC Training Session, and also a MLEC Training Session will be conducted for FREE at the Convention. If more training sessions are needed after convention, we will schedule them. An additional 2-HOTT Training Session is scheduled for September 26 th and 27 th at the River Falls #594 Lodge. Let’s talk Membership. Do all of your Lodges and Chapters have an EFFECTIVE Membership Acquisition Program? I know several that have a program, but are they really effective? Several of you have had the same program for years now that have not been effective for years. It’s time to take a close look at your membership programs. Are they effective? Are the current? Are they rewarding? Do all of your members know what the program is? If you cannot answer yes to all three of the questions it is time to revamp your program.

On the backside of an effective Membership Acquisition Program is having an even more effective Membership Retention Program. All too often we tend to sign a new member and forget him. We should be working retention from the day we sign the new member. We seem to be losing too many members after the first year of membership. Talking with those members that drop after the first year, I have learned that they all seem to have the same issues: Not feeling welcome, too many cliques, not living up to the sales pitch, and having no idea what the Moose really is. We all need to step back and reevaluate how we are taking care of all of our members. What are we providing to them as members? Are we providing them with the things that we promised when we got them to join? Are we making them feel welcome and needed when they join and come to the meetings and activities? We ALL must do better at retaining our members.

In closing, once again I would like all of you to put forth a greater effort in signing new and former

members, along with retaining our current membership. Let’s get over things that happened in the past, and look forward to what we can do to help the future. Let’s all get out of the “cliques” and act as a family, make all that enter our Lodges feel welcome, needed, and appreciated. I know that with everyone working together we can be the best Association in the Fraternity.

Until next month,

Mike Rynearson, TM