Emphasis On Membership Recruit and Retain
The success of a volunteer organization is always entirely dependent of the efforts of its membership and that is particularly true when it comes to the recruiting and retention of members. In the Veterans of Foreign Wars, membership is everyone’s responsibility.
When a veteran is invited to join our group, he or she is going to ask “What’s in it for me?”. The best answer to that, in a post as active as ours is to get them to a meeting or activity so they can see the benefits of membership for themselves. Our new Edmonds Veterans Plaza can be an excellent tool for this purpose.
VFW says numbers matter and they do. When we lobby Congress for strong support for the Veterans Administration, they want to know that we represent a large number of veterans, who represent a large number of votes. Numbers also matter when we are staffing the tables for poppy distribution on Memorial Day and Veterans Day; when we participate in the July 4 festivities and when we support Veterans in need.
Even if a member is not active, their membership is important to let everyone know that we are together in supporting veterans interests.
We all have friends and family who are qualified veterans, but are not members. Reach out to them. Invite them to a meeting so they can see “What is in it for them”.
