COUNTY MINI REVITES

PART ONE: The preparation

  1. Form your committee. I would recommend no more than 5 members.
  1. Contact Cassie at department (1-800-332-6632) and ask her to send you the list of current paid members of Post One for your county. As long as you are only asking for the County list, you will not need zip codes. Cassie has previously generated the list by counties. This list will also include zip codes that border your county. Cassie can send this e-mail in an excel spread sheet.
  1. Make 5 copies, one for each committee member.
  1. Meet with your committee and go over the list. You will need a couple of phone books and start checking phones numbers for the ones missing. You may find that some of the numbers that you have, will be no good as members don’t always update their records. Update your list and then have mailing labels generated.
  1. Go over the letter that you will send to these members, explaining who you are and why they are receiving this letter, see attached sample letter.
  1. This letter will need to be modified for your use. Make change wherever you need to.
  1. This letter will should be mailed at least 10 days prior to the date of the revite. You will be surprised how effective this letter is. In the past we have had people comment on receiving the letter as we talk with them.
  1. For mailing the letters, we used the bulk mailing permit from one of our post. We printed the letter on one side and printed the return address and bulk mailing permit on the other side in a fashion so that all we had to do was a threefold and attaché the label. This saved us cost on stamps and envelopes.
  1. It is a good idea to send out a press release to all news media in your area. All I did was send out a copy of the letter that was mailed to each post one member. My local newspaper ran an article on the revite. This is another way of getting our message to the community that we are here and looking for new members.

PART TWO The difficult part

  1. You will need to get volunteers. Hopefully before you even got this far, you will have already received the support of your county leadership. Make a sign-up sheet and get volunteers. The number of volunteers needed depends on how many names you have. I have found that it is best to have no more than 15 contacts per sheet. Most people can contact that many in 1 to 1 ½ hours. So figure on one volunteer for every sheet of contacts that you have. i.e. 10 sheets with 15 good contacts, you will need 10 people, than add 3 to 5 extra volunteers. This is to help cover the no shows.
  1. You will need the names of the volunteers, post, membership ID number, mailing address and a contact number. The reason for getting this information is twofold, you need to have a list of who was there to help for future reference and you need this information in order to submit them for a Department Commanders membership pin if eligible. More on this later.
  1. Volunteers can be legionnaires, Auxiliary and SAL. I encourage you to use all three, this is a team effort and it is important to show the Auxiliary and SAL that their participation is important to us.

PART THREE The Fun Part

  1. On the scheduled night of the revite. You should have an area(s) that is large enough so you can spread the volunteers around. They need space as it can be very distracting if they are too close to each other. If you have multiple areas it works even better.
  1. You will need one or two individuals to make sure paperwork is completed. This is important otherwise you will have to fill in the blanks later.
  1. Before you give out the sheets, give them a pep talk, get them rev’ed up. They are calling legionnaires that have already paid their dues. All that you need is to get a yes out of them to transfer them into a local post. You will receive a variety of reasons why they may not want to transfer. Be ready for them. 75% or better of the ones you talk to WILL SAY YES.
  1. Member Data Form: fill in the top heading part, address, phone number, try and get an alternate phone number also. Where the member would normally sign, just write in per phone call. This is acceptable only when their CURRENT DUES ARE PAID. Have the volunteer sign it. This is where you need one or two people to make sure this information is completed. If not,YOU will be doing it before you send them to the post and the department. I learned the hard way. The POST will be able to get the rest of the information they need once THEY verify the eligibility of the transferring member.

PART FOUR The paperwork

  1. You will need to make copies of every completed data form. This is for your future reference. There were numerous incidents that I needed to refer to these copies after the originals were mailed.
  1. Separate the post’s copy(s), andalong with a cover letter (see Sample Attached) mail to the respectivePost Commander. The letter should inform the post commander of why they are receiving these transfers and that they need to follow up with a welcome letter to the post (see sample attached).
  1. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP, if the Post Commander does not follow up with a welcome letter, we will most likely lose the transfer and now we have wasted our time. WE NEED TO STOP THE REVOLVING DOOR.
  1. Mail department their copy along with a cover letter. You also need to enclose the completed commander’s membership pin form for each eligible volunteer. What I did here was evenly divide up the transfers so every volunteer received a pin.
  1. Another option is to have all the pins mailed back to you, so you can issue them at the next county meeting along with a certificate of appreciation (see attached). This is a great tool to have these volunteers recognized publicly and you may just spark some interest from other legionnaires to help out at the next one.