First off I want to advertise an hours incentive that our board came up with. It’s a neat idea and we started it last night and our members seem pretty excited about it. We have two meetings a week, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. On Wednesday’s meeting, we put the names of all the people who were at either meeting into a hat. We put the names of all the board members into a different one. Then someone draws a name out of the first hat. The member whose name was drawn out of the hat then has a change to draw a name out of the board member hat. Basically what our board is saying is that we bet $10 that the board member drawn out of the hat can do more service hours than the general member who was drawn. From Thursday until the next Wednesday meeting the two people that had their names drawn have a competition to see who can do the largest number of hours. If the club member wins they get $10 from the club. If the board member wins, the club keeps the money. (Maybe it could be changed to donate all or part of the $10 to the Tomorrow Fund if the board member wins?)
This little activity has several good effects: it encourages both the member AND the board member to do more service, it encourages people to come to meetings, it does something to break the monotony of the meeting, and it gives our members a chance to win back some of their dues money. It also continues something that I think is very important: leadership by example. If our board isn’t doing service, how can we ask the club to?
Anyone who’s spent any sort of time in Key Club or Circle K leadership can tell you (if they’re not dumb) that being a good club president is probably the hardest job in the organization. It’s not International President, it’s not District Governor, it’s not Lieutenant Governor. It’s President. Now I knew that before I ran. But let me tell you, it’s an all the time job. When past presidents have said that they’re putting upwards of 20 hours a week into CK, they weren’t kidding. This is not something new that I’ve learned, but something that has become much more clear to me. I’m really enjoying my presidency, but I’ll breathe a big sigh or relief when April 1 rolls around. Then I’ll miss it.
But that’s the club level. I love it, I love my board… I love my members… everyone’s just great. The District board is a completely different story, however…
I’ve also noticed that while the UA Club board has been outstanding all year, there are other groups of leaders in the district that are not so outstanding. I’ve talked about that before. While I’m not one to share everything I know, or give away secrets before I have to, it has recently come to my attention that there are District Board members who read this website. Apparently some of them weren’t happy by my last post which basically said that if Kat King hadn’t been in charge of MER it would’ve been a total flop.
The thing that bugs me most about the situation right now is that because UA is the only club in the district that is willing to speak up when something isn’t right, we look like troublemakers. We’re not extra picky, or expecting too much… but we’re the ones who will complain when something isn’t done right. And why not? Our members don’t pay $8 a year for the kind of mess that we’ve gotten from this board. I went to talk to them at their last board meeting, to personally express my concern, and I made the following comment: “If I was asked to list the successes of this district board, I can list zero.” Zero. I can list failures, to be sure. In fact, I probably can’t count them all on one hand. But I wracked my brain for success stories. Zero. So I posed the question to the board… what ARE the successes? I was certain that they’d have some for me… and they did. Kinda. If you count ambiguous, subjective, abstract, and completely unmeasurable opinions as successes.
Sure, sure, they said that service hours were up. On the whole, they have UA to thank for that. I believe that we have over half of all of the district’s service hours. They said that Key Club Relations were “getting better”, and that Kiwanis relations were “getting better”. Better than what? How is this being measured? I wonder if Circle K has redeemed itself in the eyes of the Kiwanis District Governor who had to take over a workshop at LDC because the board member in charge was so poorly prepared. Or redeemed itself for the fact that the governor at the time thought that the best place to make out with his girlfriend was in the plain view of as many people as possible. They say that they’re “working better as a group” again… better than what? And if so, where are the results?
You see, though, my point was not to bring out failures… my point was to get them to start communicating. As a club president I have no idea if the board is seceding or failing if they don’t ever tell the district what they’re doing. Are they doing great? Are they doing nothing? There’s no way to know. If they follow through on our agreements from that board meeting, we’ll soon find out exactly what’s going on. I really do hope that they use the last six months of their term to turn the worst year the district has seen in more than a decade into a decent one.
The most interesting thing that I’ve heard recently, though, is that the board is upset that I write about them here in this journal. They’re upset that I’m telling other people what I think about them. Tough. This website is not an extension of the club or club board. It is my personal journal for me to write what I think. I’ll be more than happy to change factual inaccuracies, as always, but if you don’t like my opinion you have two options: work to change it or get over it.
…and, by all means, if you have an issue with something written here, feel free to talk to me about it. Talking amongst yourselves will accomplish exactly nothing.
Have a great day… oh, and if you have any comments about anything written above (or other hours incentives to share) please post a comment.