Membership
and Public Affairs Committee
ANNUAL
REPORT TO MEMBERS
The
Membership and Public Affairs Committee has been active over the last year.
Our primary concentration has been membership recruitment.
Last year we saw the first leveling off of the decline in membership in
several years. This is a good trend
and one that appears to have stopped for the second year in a row.
Membership now stands at 3,249. Our push for the upcoming year is to
INCREASE membership.
We have
encouraged new members and the assistance of existing members to recruit new
members by the use of our successful “Frugal Germans Love Cash” contest, the
free ink campaign, paid advertising campaign and a new direct mail campaign,
thanks to the generosity of the Lauren Foundation, which financed this direct
mail campaign.
You will
hear more about the “Frugal Germans Love Cash” campaign at the Breakfast on
Saturday morning, but the results were very positive.
Ken Koehler, chair of the campaign, deserves special mention for his
energy and work on the campaign.
The paid
advertising campaign consists of ads run in five of the largest monthly
genealogical publications. Maybe you
have seen our ads in one of those magazines.
The campaign was designed to run for two year so that we could make a
good evaluation of the program. This
Convention marks the end of our first year of paid advertisements.
At the end of next year, we will re-evaluate the effectiveness, based on
the return (new members and overall effectiveness of getting the word out about
AHSGR).
The free
ink campaign is a process of working with various newspaper associations, where
we provide them articles on AHSGR and they disseminate the information to local
newspapers in a given area. We have
just recently launched the first such campaign.
Should any member see an article about AHSGR in their local paper, it
would be appreciated if you could send it to the Society in
The direct
mail campaign was made possible by two large grants from the Lauren Foundation.
Using these funds, we sent out 10,000 circulars to residents with GR
surnames in the states surrounding
Later this
fall, we will have another such mailing to 10,000 GR surnames in the States and
the Canadian provinces surrounding
All in all,
the Membership and Public Affairs Committee has been very busy and I give my
heartfelt thanks to Nancy Borrell, Vice Chair, Ken Koehler, Jim Weibert, Ron
Rutz, Leona Mann, Joyce Deines, Diana Bell, Dodie Rotherham and Larry Schenkel
for their very valuable advice and assistance to the new Chair.
Bob Lembke,
Chair