Art Ridley led us in the Pledge of Allegiance this morning. It was followed by a prayer by Lynn Eastman.

Fines were opened and there was no escaping the abuse of fines from, the soon to be ex-king, John Losinski.

Meeting Notes

President Greg Hilliker informed us of the Board Meeting coming up on September 25 at 6:15 pm at the Bridge

We discussed ticket sales to the $5000 Raffle. Time is running short and we haven’t even covered the cost of the event yet. All members were reminded to sell, sell, sell.

The Installation Banquet for 2014/2015 will be held on September 18 starting at 6:00 PM. Arrangements have been made to hold the festivities at Ruggero’s Restaurant located at  5311 W Corunna Rd, Flint, MI 48532.

Guest Speaker

Dave Crabill was our Speaker Chair this week. Dave invited Cherryl Thames to be our guest speaker. She will be taking office October 1st as the Governor 2014/2015 for the Michigan District of Optimist International.

Cherryl was kind enough to swear in our newest member Kim Banat of First Merit Bank. Kim’s sponsor was Matt Mrasek. So it is time for a new king to rule the world of fines. Fines were re-opened and Kim graciously paid every fine levied against her with a cheerful countenance.

What a coincidence that Cherryl was able to install our newest member because she actually showed up to talk to us about our new membership efforts. The name of Cherryl’s presentation was Vu DeJa. The main focus is about being able to look at the future with a new set of eyes.

Cherryl told us the stages of change for older or well established clubs are 1. Suspicion – “I am leery about this new idea”. 2. Acknowledgement – “Well it is a new idea”. 3. Rejection – “That will never work”. 4. Acceptance – “Actually, we need to act on this idea”. 5. Hope – “I hope this works for us”.

She also told us that it is important to look at our membership mix. There may be segments of our community that we have not considered for membership simply because we are caught up in outdated thinking. Cheryl gave us a matrix to fill out to make it easier to examine our own membership mix and see what we are missing. Her quote to leave us with was “We didn’t know it couldn’t be done, so we went ahead and did it”.

Reminders

Reminders were given as follows:

• Board Meeting on September 25th
• All members are reminded to SELL, SELL, SELL $5,000 Raffle Tickets

Respectfully yours in optimism,
Jeff Dennings