Ladies,

Thank you all to those who were able to attend this important meeting.  The turnout was somewhat disappointing but we had a great meeting and started the project.  Originally, I had 21 people confirm they would attend and we ended up with 13 attending. Several of you had things come up and cancelled ahead which I appreciate.  We had three No Shows.  Obviously we have a problem even within this most important group in the club.

I asked each interest chair to share their event and if they had problems, cancellations, and no shows and what ideas they have to resolve the situation.

Terri Hatcher gave us a great update on Book lovers and they don’t really have a problem which is wonderful. 

Andrea Woods gave us a great update on Creative Adventures and her ideas.  Most of her events are paid in advance, directly to her.  Her most recent candle making was so successful she had to add a few more classes.  Yeah Andrea.

Most other groups represented reported the same issues with cancellations, some the same day and also No Shows.

We had a few suggestions of changing the opening dates to a week ahead instead of a month ahead when people know their schedules.  The board had considered this but realized this would require another calendar manager or two to calculate and change all the individual open dates on 30 events each month in addition to confusing the membership as to what opens when.  We have opened events the day after the newsletter goes out ever since beginning to use club express seven years ago.

Susan Brandenburg, Calendar Manager, also noted that she has coded each event to send a 5 day reminder notice so people can cancel ahead to let the waitlist be activated.  Some chairs said they send two reminders instead of one.  Susan offered to change any event to additional reminders.  If you would like to do this for your event and need assistance please reach out to Susan.  She is happy to assist anyone with their event after you have edited your standard monthly information.

In recap, it was decided that the Monday Message every week should include a Check your calendar and cancel if you cannot make it.  I will continue to receive cancellation notices on all events so I can track date and time.  Interest chairs were shown how to enter attendance for their events.  By entering your attendance it allows me to see who attended.  If you do not check their name as attended it records it as a No Show.  I will call each No Show just to be sure they know we did miss them and to ensure they are ok?  The last thing we want is a No Show that had a serious accident or emergency and we were unaware.

This is the first step to analyzing the data and perhaps let us understand why it is happening and what we can do to resolve it.  Please know this is just the first step.  We cannot solve something in one meeting.

_{If you need instructions/assistance on entering your attendance please reach out to Lori Herzhauser or Susan Brandenburg.  As I am running attendance reports I see some events have no attendance recorded.  This is very important to making this project successful.}