The following notes on club development may assist you in establishing or enhancing your club’s programs.

Planning

Developing a successful club requires commitment of each club officer’s time and energy. The importance of setting both personal and club goals cannot be overstated. Create a plan, and work through items together as a team.

Club Expansion

To be successful a club must increase its outreach and this will grow membership. Democrats join a club to share mutual concerns and work toward common goals. Offering enthusiasm and a sense of belonging, while presenting meaningful programs at meetings, helps to expand the membership.

Membership Records

Use the same spreadsheet that is submitted with membership contact info records to the SDCDP/CDP to record meeting attendance, when dues were paid and how much, skills and interests, languages spoken, and other information relevant to your club. You may also choose to store this information in MailChimp, or another cloud-based service you are using for your club, to provide centralized access to your club officers and as a backup in case of loss of paper records.

Welcoming Newcomers

The club Executive Board (more specifically the Membership Director or officer to whom these duties have been assigned) should take responsibility for welcoming newcomers at club meetings. The President is normally busy therefore he/she must have help in greeting both members and newcomers.

Some ideas are:

• Station friendly members at the door to greet people as they arrive. Two or more relaxed gregarious members greeting newcomers at the door can make them feel welcome and "at home" at the meeting. Introducing newcomers to others helps shyer people become acquainted.
• Place a table near the entrance with a sign-in paper for all attending to write their name, address and phone number. The table should also contain name tags and wide felt pens (be sure names are written legibly in large block letters), membership applications, club brochures and other appropriate Democratic literature.
• Serve refreshments; refreshments induce people to stand around and talk, enabling members and newcomers to know each other. Servers may help to give new folks someone with whom to speak.
• At a small meeting whoever is presiding may ask each new attendee to introduce himself/herself, and add something about where he/she lives when he/she has come to the area, etc. In larger clubs, in the interest of time, newcomers, guests and new members may simply be introduced.
• Follow-up calls to new and interested persons helps make them feel welcome. The sign-in sheet provides a good cross-reference. Be sure they receive the next newsletter.
• Send a welcome letter via US or email. See D.1 Welcome New Members Letter.

Intra-Club communications

Emails or phone trees, consisting of volunteer members, are helpful and efficient for reminders of meetings, changes which occasionally occur, and communications about events that may happen between meetings. Long-time members, as well as new ones, appreciate reminder calls.

Phone Listing

Listing your club’s phone number wherever possible may be very valuable, especially in an election year. It’s still possible to get listed in the phone book (whatever that is?) but better may be to get listed in all the places your community goes to look for events and information. Check with your local library, places of worship, schools, colleges, and community coffee shops as to where the go to sources of information are and make yourself known within those groups. This may be done online, or may involve printing flyers and leaflets.