Local Association Meetings

[Dawn Forgeur, CCLS]

Many may have noticed the drop in attendance for your local association dinner meetings. Have you restructured (or are you going to) your local meetings so there is less business/educational meetings and more fun meetings? How did you do that and what were your “fun” events that drew people to attend? Has it been successful in drawing more people out and obtaining more new members?

[mariabishop]

We have tried both fun and business/educational events. We only get Board members and maybe one or two other members attending. We have had to cancel events due to no/low attendance. Not sure what the problem is. We can’t attend in person because we can’t meet the restaurant’s minimum. All our meetings are on Zoom. We are not holding a holiday event because of low attendance at the last two year’s events. The Board is doing all the work with no participation from the membership. We may have to consider going dark if this continues.

[Janice Williams]

Stanislaus County LPA reverts between a monthly evening meeting or a lunchtime Zoom meeting. Usually, it’s every other month, but it does depend if we can get a speaker for the evening meeting. We don’t have much participation from the entire membership, but we have a few loyal members and board members who attend most meetings. As Maria Bishop mentioned, we don’t have enough members to meet the restaurant’s minimum, so we tend to have our evening meetings at a member’s office with food still being offered.

[Dawn Forgeur, CCLS]

Are there any members in the forums who feel comfortable enough to chime in as to why they don’t go to monthly meetings with your local association?

[lynneprescott]

Sacramento LPA has historically been a strictly “weeknight meeting” type of association and has not shown good participation or interest for anything outside of that, unless it’s Fairytale Town during Halloween or the Reno Bus Trip. However, we recently held a wine tasting and silent auction event on a Friday evening and had a really good turnout! I am hoping that is an indicator that we can start doing more fun/social things outside of the work week (or even during the work week)!

[Kristi L. Edwards, CCLS]

For several years, Marin County LPA has held membership meetings every other month (Feb, April, June, Aug, Oct, Dec) and board meetings on the months in between. We like in person meetings with a speaker, but sometimes do zoom meetings with a webinar from LPI. For a long time, we had restaurant locations that did not charge a room fee or minimum, but after COVID, our current location has started charging a minimum that that is hard for us. We have a small membership, but a group of regulars who really enjoy seeing one another. We have held successful events on weekends (San Rafael Pacific’s baseball games, paint parties, mini-golf), but it’s still a small group who participate. We will need to get creative and attract new members!

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