The District’s School of Instruction was held on August 17th. All the Posts were represented while we went over the latest information from National and Department. Linda Fairbank, membership chairman for the west side of the State came and spoke about the latest changes regarding increased dues, length of memberships and the opportunities we have signing up members and having continuous members pay their dues prior to January 1st. In essence, someone paying today is actually paying through December 31, 2014 while someone paying in 2014 will have their membership expire on the same date in 2015. It’s a great time to join VFW and get 16 months of membership for the price of one year. With memberships expiring throughout the year, our Quartermasters and membership chairs will have their work cut out for them over the next year or so until everyone is on the same page. This is also an excellent time to have members convert their memberships to a Life membership and we will be preaching that to the choir throughout the year.
We also covered a number of other VFW programs but let me point out that all this information is available at www.vfw.org. Simply go the website and spend some time reviewing the information available there. Also, you will find resources for Commanders and Quartermasters. I was disappointed in not having any new members attend. The crusty old hands have heard most of it already but the newer members would have been exposed to a lot of programs conducted by the VFW that they might not be familiar or know that they even exist.