WAVE OF CHANGE
Lunch Table Topics Summary
Monday, June 24, 2013
During the lunch held on Monday, June 24th of the Governors Round Table, the
Governors were asked to discuss the topics below and share their ideas. The
following is a summary of those conversations.
Table Topic Ideas:
1. What your successful member retention ideas?
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Current member mentors a new mentor
A pledge to mentor
Have a separate get-together with newer members; don’t have to rely on seasoned members
to mentor. What do they enjoy, what are difficulties, etc?
Just having a social night, some invite husbands to come to social nights
Have a membership social in May, gives them a chance to renew their membership there at a
discount.
Engaging them in service before joining; why would a member come back when invited to a
business meeting, or any meeting that is too filled with acronyms or insider information?
Is saying the Soroptimist pledge required, because there are comments about it, especially
when trying to recruit members and retain them?
 The pledge is not required; headquarters does not keep it on the website, and when
questioned about it, encourages clubs to find another way to give voice to its
inspiration. It is a rather antiquated statement that has not aged well with modern
society, and has never been used in any other Soroptimist federation.
Have no guilt clubs. Tell members, especially new and young members, to do what they can
when they can. Tell them not to feel bad if they can’t do something. Don’t make guilt the
reason for members quitting or not being able to participate as fully as others. Make sure to
send all members emails, keep them up to speed, have contact with them once per month.
This has proved to be successful for growing clubs.
Must remember we are all volunteers. Even if people can’t attend, they pay dues and are
ambassadors for the organization.
Fines for sitting next to the same person twice, you get fined.
Be open-minded to difference. One president has piercings and tattoos. So what? She is
passionate about the mission and a good leader.
2. How is your Region building Soroptimist’s reputation locally? How are you tracking the
increase?
 Through Region Facebook Page - connecting with clubs and allowing everyone’s
information to disseminate across the board
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Club Newsletters posted
Helping clubs achieve their goals
By educating the clubs, helping get the message out.
3. What civility tips and techniques do you use to help maintain healthy clubs?
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After convention, gave talk to members. (from daughter’s school) Golden Rules, list of
behaviors, took it to the Fall Meetings. “Play nice together in sandbox” Written for
children but so applicable.
Call attention to negative behaviors, bring awareness levels up
Treat each other the way we treat our recipients
Seasoned members more critical of less-involved member
Address the behavior, bring awareness to it, suggest civility workshops
Consider personality differences - gauge your members
Mantra: Be Positive (B+) - Use as a Tagline: If somebody goes on a tangent, you are able
to red flag them by saying “B+”
Respected Members = Leaders, setting example.
Create a provision statement ahead of time: When holding a meeting, to keep people
from having their own conversations, tell them that you are going to hit a bell or do
something whenever they get off track. Ring the bell to reel everyone back in
Walk around room when holding meetings to engage everyone.
Common issue: the one person standing up giving a presentation is like a steam-roller,
has their own agenda. How do you stop that? Say that you’ll put their idea on a list to
come back to later.
Invite all members to events and meetings to keep members engaged. No cliques.
Do good projects to keep members in the club and happy
Some topics may not be able to come up for discussion because members may be on
opposite sides (i.e. abortion).
In order to solve civility issue, every member has to be in belief of the mission. If you are
sold on the idea of the mission of helping women and girls, then members will be kind to
each other because they want to help women and girls. Make sure members are doing
the jobs they signed up for.
Train leaders on civility. Have weekend retreat for leaders.
Education is very important, but not just of programs. Education about attitude as a
Soroptimist. If you sign up to help others then you must act like you want to help others.
Be an example. That kind of education is really needed.
Civility is important, it means everything in the club setting
Minimum numbers of members is 15, need that minimum. If less than 15, not enough to
serve in leadership meetings
What skills are needed to head up a civility workshop and conversation?
Clear expectations.
Desert Coast Region has a club solution advisors, ends up being a conflict resolution
advisor, works with district director. Also has some rules of engagement so that
everyone agrees to conduct themselves.
Intergenerational communication issues…
They remember the woman in Hawaii the how women throw rough their power away
(the hat lady with all the hats), a member worked with her and basically re-did her
workshop in MWR, and will do next year.
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Australian Soroptimist who will speak to clubs for a bed and board, how Soroptimist
changed her life.
Empower members. Meet one on one with a person who is causing strife in the club.
Find out why and isolate the problem. Let people know you care about them and try to
flip a negative personality into a positive one. Make them understand the consequences
to the atmosphere of the club. One disgruntled member can destroy the morale of a
club.
Take the bull by the horns. Address problems immediately. Festering makes it worse.
Find out what the facts are. Talk to more than 3 people. There might be 6 sides to the
issues. Always address people with respect. Use humor to diffuse the situation.
Involve federation immediately if the problem is beyond the club or region’s scope.
Make sure everyone is friendly to each other. Have club members sit next to someone
different at every meeting.
Make a big deal about new members. They get special privileges, like going to the head
of the bathroom line, or a LYD rubber bracelet.
4. What have you found useful in helping club presidents disseminate SIA messaging to their
members?
 Go over their heads to by emailing to individual members
5. How are you motivating and encouraging clubs to budget for giving at least 10% of their funds
raised to Club Giving this coming club year?
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Require all clubs to provide financials, bylaws and other information. Governor can see if
club is healthy. Then it is easier to review with them and demonstrate why and how they
can contribute 10%. Remind them it’s 10% of net, not gross.
Clubs feel they already set their budgets before convention and they couldn’t be changed
to address the 10%.
Need more education about where the money goes. That it goes to program. Must keep
reinforcing.
Need to show clubs the big picture. They just see things in terms of their own backyards.
Don’t want to give WOA to women outside their communities. Sam asked the question,
then how do they ID themselves as Soroptimists (an organization that has the word
international in it)? This is especially difficult with some long standing members.
Governors are using fundraising messaging and tools. And they will continue to. Getting
the word out in person is the most effective way.
Encourage clubs to have their own PR table at their own fundraisers. So when nonSoroptimists are in attendance, they can take the information and become educated
about SIA and its mission.
It was tough. A handful of clubs, felt that contributing money to SIA would violate their
efforts to raise funds for the community. They do not embrace the international aspect
of the org at all. They’ll pay dues and that’s it. They’re isolated, and very locally focused.
Balance of autonomy vs. bigger picture
You can explain it 7 ways to Sunday, and they’ll shake their head but they still won’t
embrace it… passive-aggressive
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Continue to get the message out consistently to multiple perspectives, i.e. Blog,
newsletters – from governors to clubs.
Can we have: an expectation of clubs? Do this… or else, what?
Incentives: WOA participation, if you do this… then we get this amount of $ and
support.
Recommendation to HQ – when they fill out the form 200 to presidents and treasurers,
don’t ask for personal email. Contradicting messages… give me personal email vs. club
email.
6. What have you learned about coordinating a region conference that others should know?
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If you keep costs down, it will increase the number of people who will come.
One host club can’t handle it all in (particularly in a large region). Delegate the
responsibilities to different clubs: have once club handle printing, one handle
registration, one handle table decorations, etc. Rotate clubs who do what every year.
Have region treasurer serve as the treasurer of the conference.
Have an updated manual and keep it up to date
Conference is crucial to helping members understand why they are a Soroptimist.
A fun and cost-effective site for younger members is important
Have a fund for people who can’t afford to go.
Have a special event i.e. wine and cheese. Pay for the people who stay overnight but
charge the people who do not stay overnight. (Incentive to get members to stay
throughout the entire conference)
Do raffles, auctions, etc throughout the year to try and offset the cost of the conference
to help lower the price for members.
Can’t predict the future. You could plan the whole event and a hurricane hits.
Have conference committee that takes care of all the conference logistics
Every member/club has to contribute a mandatory fee to contribute to paying for
conference. All money goes into a pool. This increase attendance (Sort of like SIA’s
mandatory convention fee)
Subsidized meal plans to keep prices down.
A fun theme for the event to help increase attendance.
Appoint conference chair to oversee and help coordinate
Online conference registration/have as much registration material as possible online
Try an all-inclusive registration fee
Don’t rely only on the coordinator; make sure you know what is happening. Use a
committee and be sure the board is fully informed of what is going on. The Committee
is appointed by the Governor and Appointed Committee Chair.
7. SIA Bylaws, Article IV, Section 5.02 Entitlements, Item d., states that a Soroptimist cannot hold
two elected positions within the Soroptimist organization at the same time. Does this need to
change?
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No, power should not be concentrated on one person/volunteer members – it’s difficult
to serve more than one position
We want to appropriately skilled person to fill a position
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Consensus: Clubs and members already stretched too thin. These governors advise clubs
to keep it simple and not have too many officers etc.
The power shift changes if someone is on the region/federation level and club level.
Small clubs need all the help they can get and it puts a stress on them if someone gets
pulled off into a region or other capacity.
Why would anyone want to hold more than one position?
Regions struggle to get the leadership people too.
Potential for a conflict of interest between the two positions
Some women can handle the duel positions, but others can’t. Some may not realize the
workload.
This may be a problem in only a few regions, where a region officer had to step in to
take over a club office when no one else would.
If we keep relying on the same women, in the long term, we may putting to much on
them and burn them out.
8. Others????
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Japanese Governors have official visits to clubs, so they use that for education and
training so members become skilled in serving in leadership positions. This gives the
opportunity to get SIA messages out there. They also use this to be transparent; share
and disclose information to the clubs.
Other topics that were not discussed at tables:
1. What are your successful membership recruitment ideas?
2. How are you increasing the impact of club participation in Women’s Opportunity Award
program?
3. What do you do to prepare and support your region chairs to deliver on SIA goals and
objectives?
4. What have you found increases understanding of our members when explaining how SIA uses
funds donated?
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