Invite someone to join your circle of Friends today

Have you been thinking about membership in your Optimist Club? Last week we learned that the Optimist Club of Roseburg is making a concerted effort to bring in new members so that they can do even more in their community.

This week, we want to hear from you! What is your club doing to attract, recruit and retain members and what have you personally done to help them?

• Have you taken a morning or afternoon to Walk 'n Talk about your Optimist Club in your community? 
• Are you actively seeking leads? 
• Have you joined your Chamber of Commerce or other networking resource in your community? 
• Are you hosting a New Optimists Welcome (NOW) activity? 
• Were volunteers from outside the organization invited to participate in your latest program? 
• Have you added a Friend of Optimist to your club's roster?

We can be passive, do good projects, and hope that others like what they see enough to get involved. Or we can be more proactive, more inviting. To help you extend the invitation to even more people, Optimist International has created the Friends of Optimist category.


You see, Optimist International understands that not everyone wants to commit to attending meetings. They know that businesses would like to support our clubs even though the owner or manager can't be away from work at the time the club meets.  The value of the Friends of Optimist membership option is that it allows a new member to associate with your Optimist Club at the level that appeals to them with no other strings attached.  Your club and Optimist International will communicate with Friends, and when the time is right, we believe that Friends will become more involved, maybe with donations or maybe with time.

Optimist International believes in this category of membership so much, they have also created an incentive for  Optimist Clubs to try it out. The "Find some Friends" incentive:

Add 3 Friends of Optimist to your club between January 1 and June 30, 2011 and your club will get to add 1 new traditional member at no charge for processing and no charge for International Dues until September 30, 2012. The new traditional member must be added by August 31 of the current Optimist fiscal year. 

Waiving dues, and receiving banner patches are not the reason to add members. Those are merely a thank-you for doing so. The reason we add members is to share our passion with others. Won't you do that? Share what you like about being a member and ask someone to join your Optimist Club, as a Friend of Optimist or a traditional member, today.