A new year, a new focus
First, I want to thank each of you for your support not only for myself in the role of Club President but also for your confidence in the Board of Directors, which has a nice blend of seasoned leaders with two new Board members who are relatively new to the Club.
I think our first focus must be on maintaining and improving the member experience at the Club. This means executing our “normal” activities such as social events, MND, golf events, cards, etc. at a high level that is recognizable by Members and that supports Member participation. It also means that we are open to trying new ideas to improve the Member experience with the dose of realism that says not all of the new ideas will work as intended.
We added approximately 20 new Members in 2025 which got us almost to the target of 150. A great job by Izzy, Tim and the Members who brought in their friends and neighbors as guests and exposed them to The Club. As you know, however, events and people change and we will start off 2026 somewhere closer to 145 Members. So, we have work to do to maintain our focus on increasing our Membership levels.
How do we focus on increasing our Membership levels in a society that appears to be less supportive of our social club model than it was historically? I believe we need a two-pronged approach. One is to continue the tactical work of increasing Membership one candidate at a time based on friends and neighbors we know. This is important to slowly building our Membership levels and offsetting some of the inevitable attrition we will see every year.
The second approach is a bit more strategic in nature. It says, while at the same time focusing on getting the people we know into the Club, how do we get people we have yet to meet and know into the Club. Without losing our identity as a Social Club or altering our bylaws, how do we significantly increase our visibility in the community to people we don’t know and haven’t met yet. This will be one of the topics that I will ask the Board to work on and I will also need help from many of you.
To help with this I am going to put some energy into making sure that we get the input of some of our newest Members into why the joined the Club and what they want to see out of the Club in the future. More on this in the next couple of weeks.
We also need to start thinking about how we are going to maintain this building here on Enterprise Drive. Over the past couple of years, we have experienced some important building maintenance issues on HVAC and plumbing. We need to get a little more structured on how we think about maintaining this site and need to develop a 3-5 plan on what future actions are required.
Most importantly, we just need to have some fun and good companionship among Members. That is why we joined and it is why we are still here. To that end, we have a busy January already set-up:
-New Member Breakfast (January social event)
-Trail Blazer event (old cars)
-Happy Hour
-Bartender training
-MND, Golf, Poker, Bridge, Coffee and more
I’ll end with “feedback is a gift, no matter how it is given” and in this Club, “always assume positive intent”. Thank you.
Jim Grahlmann
Club President