Meeting Notes

We had a great turnout for this meeting, with 28 members present plus one guest. Stephanie introduced Angie Cuneaz to our club for a second time, but this time as our guest instead of our speaker. Angie just recently visited our club as a speaker, but she liked us so much that she decided to come back to visit — AND to turn in her application for membership! Since the Board met Thursday evening, we were able to vote on her membership application quickly, but I won’t divulge our decision here. I will just say that we look forward to hopefully welcoming her as our newest club member very soon! “Thank You”, Stephanie, for setting an example for all of us — one of our newest club members, our first female member, and already bringing a potential member to join us! GREAT JOB!!! [I just hope Angie can pass our stringent requirements for club membership]! My guess is it will be a slam-dunk! 🙂

The meeting started off with three of our members forgetting that we meet for breakfast instead of lunch! I think Floyd mumbled something about not being able to roll out of bed in time. Judge Joe — well it IS usually a lunch meeting for him, so he’s forgiven. But I’m not sure what Dr. Jack’s excuse was. At least he made up for his tardiness by collecting a record $29.85 in fines for the morning! I’m not quite sure how that works when the maximum fine is supposed to be $1/member — 28 members — hmmm. Oh well – maybe we need to change the title from tail-twister to arm-twister? Or maybe we just need 28 members at EVERY meeting! Wow!! That is the most fine money for one meeting in 4 years since I became Treasurer! At any rate, there were so many side conversations going on while the fines were being levied that I couldn’t hear ANY of them, but Dr. Jack must have heard every one of them! Guess that’s the way it SHOULD be!

Reverend Lynn won half of a $39 50/50 pot this morning — now let’s see if he remembers to sell tickets next week to collect his winnings! Our guest informed us all that she had several free tickets for The Whiting on 2/13 for the play “Anything Goes”. I hope everyone that was able to go and wanted free tickets heard Angie’s offer. Sorry these minutes obviously didn’t go out in time to inform anyone that wasn’t at the meeting! BUT, ya shoulda been there — and “Thank You” Angie! Sure wish I had been able to go, as Greg saw the play on Broadway and said it was “Great”!

Stephanie opened the business meeting and provided a multi-page handout about our fund-raising events, some suggestions for changing/improving our $5000 raffle, and an idea for a potential new fund-raiser. The handout included way too much information to attempt to cover here, but suffice it to say that much thought and effort had already been discussed by eight committee members prior to this meeting, with Stephanie and Jeff presenting the committee’s ideas to the club-at-large. There was additional discussion from many of those 29 who were in attendance on 2/12. A sign-up sheet was distributed for anyone interested in serving on a committee (or committees) to improve the overall effectiveness and success of ALL of this club’s fund-raising efforts, and maybe come up with a couple new ideas. It was absolutely AWESOME to have 20 signatures on that sign-up sheet! A big “Thank You” to everyone who signed up!!

If we want to continue to have a club that can truly make a difference in the lives of our local youth, it will take each and every one of our members’ efforts in some way, and this appears to be a great start! We give away about $13,000 to $14,000 (on average) every year to various charities, and I think we all would like to see that grow. However, we have been raising only about $9400 to $11,000 annually for our Youth Work Fund through the $5000 raffle for the past several years, so we found it necessary to draw funds from our perpetual fund in 2014 to help support these programs. That trend can’t continue for many more years, so we need to step-up our fund-raising activities somehow. With some effort and OPTIMISM, there is no reason we can’t grow our club and continue be a wonderful part of the West Flint community. Let’s make his happen!

Reminders

  • Board Meeting 6 PM February 12th at the Bridge
  • Big Brothers & Big Sisters Bowling at 7:00 February 19th at Galaxy Lanes on Hill Rd. in Grand Blanc

In Optimism!

Walt Widder