 Well, good afternoon. Thank you for attending the DAV National Convention Membership Seminar. I'm your National Membership Director, Doug Wells. It's my privilege to be here with you this afternoon. Let me take a couple of moments to make some introductions. To my left, if I could get them to raise their hands as I call them, the Chairman of our Interim Membership Committee, Warren Tobin from the Great State of North Dakota, Ronnie Mabry from the Great State of Connecticut. He's a Patriot fan, but don't hate on him. Ed Kalk from right here in the Great State of Louisiana, and Brandy Hayek from my home state of Michigan. I'd also like to take a moment. She probably doesn't need an introduction because I'm sure you've already gotten to know her and embraced her, but Robin Higgins, my Membership Manager back in headquarters, she's here in registration. Thank you. Without her, my days would be much more hectic. And also, I want to take a moment to point out Heather Kolmeier, one of my analysts from National Headquarters. She is our resident membership system and portal expert, and she's positioned outside the Resolutions Office for assistance if you need that. So please give them all a round of applause. And just by way of some bookkeeping here, our Chairman announced this from the Credentials Committee this morning, and we'll continue to announce it as appropriate, but we have recognized an unusually low number of department delegates. So please ask your folks, your comrades here at the convention, if they had intended to register as a department delegate, please ask them to inspect their credentials. And if there's a discrepancy, have them come see us in registration, we will get that squared away. It doesn't take but a few seconds. So we just want to make sure that the count is right. And I apologize for any inconvenience there. But again, I am Doug Wells, your National Membership Director. This is my information on the screen here, dwells at DAV.org, I dwell at DAV. So it's kind of hard to forget. But that is my email address, comes right to me, and that is my direct line. So I want to be available to you, I want to hear the great success stories, I want to help you resolve your issues. Everything that I can do related to your membership program will help you facilitate anything in any way. Please let me know. If I don't have the answer, I believe in a no wrong door policy, I will get you to the right person that will. So don't hesitate to reach out. I got a lot of exciting stuff to talk about. I wanted to give just a quick recap on our March membership madness event that we did last spring. We want to go ahead and just remind everybody that we are going to be doing this again this year. We did limit it to applications that came in via the mobile app, which I will talk about here in a little bit. This year, moving forward, we're going to open this up to all electronic forms of DAV membership applications. So anything online that you do to sign somebody up will count for this on behalf of your department. So remember, there are two main prizes, so actually four main prizes, but two for the departments and then two for individual recruiters. We have a cup for the department champion, the person that goes through the brackets successfully and ends up the tournament champion. And then we also have the most valuable player for the department, the one that recruits the most overall. So if a department is eliminated on an off week or something of that nature, we still want them to compete because they can win the department MVP. In addition to those fine trophies, they get a $250 gift card from office depot, so to help with administrative costs and things of that nature. And then also we have iPads that we will give to the top individual recruiter and runner up. Now you have to recruit at least 25 members online to be eligible for this. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this as we move forward, but all the metrics tell us that we want to get folks online with recurring credit card payments because they're exponentially more likely to convert to a full-life member if we do that. So please promote this. Please start making preparations for next spring as soon as you start to hear stuff on TV about the NCAA tournament, start thinking, okay, it's time to start recruiting for March membership madness. So as you can see here is the bracket that went through. I had to chastise my counterpart from Michigan Brandy because she let Ohio beat us. I don't know how that happened, but my good friends from that state down south did not let me live that down. But Nebraska ended up winning both the tournament and the department MVP. So please give a round of applause to Nebraska. For those of you that are in the membership system and are interested in the membership standings and the divisions, how we break that up, we have changed our methodology there instead of breaking up the divisions by the groups of life member total that they have in their state. So you would just have like the few really big states and then you'd have a lot of little states together. All of our recruiting efforts right now are percentile based. So I thought it was a fair, a more fair situation to make sure that each division had an equal number of contestants as possible. So I just went down the life membership population totals. The top 10 largest departments were put into a division. Then the next top 10, the next top 10, and then 11 and 11 because we have 52 departments. So now each department essentially has or each division has essentially an equal number of departments that they're competing against. So I hope that this will level the playing field a little bit with respect to our membership standings competitions because of course we want to foster that friendly competition and camaraderie amongst each department. I had Nebraska and Iowa email me constantly toward the end of the membership year because they had a little competition going amongst themselves. And I thought that was great stuff. So there's the first three divisions. And then you can see how the next couple of divisions panned out there. And these have 11 each, of course. And if you have any questions on that or what that's going to look like and how that will change, for sure, give me a call. There may be some movement between the divisions. If departments, life member populations expand or contract, you know, so certainly we could see some movement that way, but it will be minimal, if any. And also, if you're taking pictures of each slide, you don't have to do that. Just give me, shoot me an email, and I will be happy to share this presentation with you, no problem. So we have a really big task ahead of us this year. This is something that's incredibly important. And I'm hopeful that all of my chapter leaders will be talking to their department folks, and our department leadership will be disseminating this stuff out with great vigor to our chapter folks. But we have, you know, just under 200,000 trial members on our roles. Now trial members are folks that have not paid us anything towards their membership dues. Typically speaking, the vast majority of them are folks that have transitioned out of the military and been exposed to one of our transition service officers on the basis that have helped them file their initial claim with VA and got them routed to our national service offices and that sort of thing. And we offered them a trial membership. And it's a very, you know, complicated issue, but most of these folks are 90 percent of them are more than three years old on our roles. So we need to, you know, do what we have to do and probably purge anybody that hasn't been converted to a paid member by the next year end. We have gone to great effort to locate and make sure we have good addresses, phone numbers, emails, at least two of the three on most of these folks. But when we also included them in our most recent spring mailing, all of these trial members that we did have good contact information on were included in our spring mailing. And we did get a little bit of a return on them. So we did. We were able to manage a conversion rate on some of them, but not nearly as many as we had hoped. So I'm hopeful that, you know, a grassroots approach will be much more successful. We're going to organize some nationwide conference calls and hopefully, you know, we'll get our membership chairmen involved in department leaderships, try to figure out what the best practices are for for this effort. And I think we can be very successful, but we have to really look at the dynamic of how we're recruiting moving forward. I want to make this I want to shift away from, you know, the emphasis being on converting part life to full life. And that's kind of where we've been. We still need to have strategies internally and how to ensure that people will convert to full life members, because that's we want that, of course, but we, you know, we need to we need to get after the folks that aren't members of DAV in any capacity already. And there's a lot. There's an awful lot of folks out there that are eligible for membership in DAV. So in years past, I know that a lot of folks have felt like they've kind of been out in the ether, just, you know, walking around, waiting to bump into somebody magically that is eligible for membership in the DAV will no more. It's my commitment to you that we are going to share our lists with you, our member prospect files, our trial member lists so that you can sort them as best you see fit in your locale, divvying them up amongst your your member recruiters and go after these folks and offer them, you know, service first. What can we do for you? That's who we are, right? What can we do for you? Is there anything we can do for your family? Can we offer you a service through our local voluntary assistance program, volunteer assistance program through LVAP? Can we can we help coordinate a service for you? And then we would certainly love you to be a member of DAV, but the service needs to be can become first. And that's where I think our focus needs to be is is reaching out to our fellow veterans of all eras, offering the services that we provide, leveraging those things that we're so good at our service officers, our our voluntary services, our transportation network, all of the other unique things that all different chapters and departments do, offering those things. And I'm telling you, I believe in my heart of hearts that if we do that first, they're going to be chomping at the bit to become a member. And I also think because we're not we're not focusing on the conversion from part life to full life at that point, just bringing them aboard that utilizing the online applications and inviting them to become a member for as little as $10 a month, that will be more enticing that will be much more enticing to not only them, but to the recruiters as well. So there's pluses to that all the way around. So coming back to the to the trial members, as I said, we went through a great deal of effort to try to locate as many of these folks as we could. Unfortunately, during 2017 year in processes here at the end of June, we had to purge over 36,000 trial members from our list because we could not find good contact information on them at all. And I of course wasn't going to share that those folks with you just to have you get return address envelopes and things like that. So you know, you may have noticed that our membership is now nearly 1.3 million. We weren't able to maintain the 1.3 million membership and stay above that. But I'm hopeful that we can get back there with the hard work and support of each other. Trial members have had a historically low conversion rate. And I'm hopeful that as we, you know, let you know where these folks live and create that target rich environment for you, that's your membership recruitment efforts, especially when it comes to the conversion of our newest veterans will be much, much higher. And I am working hard with the Interim Membership Committee and other folks at headquarters trying to create symbiosis between myself and my counterpart in volunteer services, John Kleindienst, to leverage both of our programs as well as Jeff Hall, our employment director, to leverage all three of our programs for the benefit of one another. Something that we're implementing on the professional side of the house with our transition service officers. Historically, when a TSO met either in a group environment or one on one with with a transition service member, they would have them fill out a pre separation briefing form or what we commonly refer to as a half sheet. And quite often, you know, the service member may not be getting out for six months a year sometimes and they would give us their base housing address or their dot gov or dot mail email address and or government issued phone number. So once they transitioned out, we would we would lose track of them. So that was part of our problem here, you know, we did a great job of, you know, kind of land in a jab there while they were still in the military and, you know, exposing them to DAV programs and services, but we weren't able to follow up that right hook because they would get out and we would lose track of them. So once I identified that as an issue and now we've got some technology available to us, what's going to happen is we're getting rid of the half sheets. The 1990s have called and they want their stuff back. Okay. So we're going to leverage technology. What we're going to do is as we're giving that briefing either on a one on one basis or in a group setting, the TSO will have the service member pull out their pad or their phone and text DAV to a specific phone number. And they will quickly get back a link that they will click on and it will create a form that will capture six data points. Of course, the phone number that they're texting from, their name, date of birth, date of discharge, and the site they were at and maybe one or two other pieces of information, but the idea is to diary that information for 30 days subsequent to their data discharge. And then we come back to them with the offer for trial membership with the long form, maybe a soft task for actual membership. Maybe we'll incentivize it with the premium item. I don't know. We're still looking at some of that, but nonetheless, we're going to send them to a landing page that will inspire them to become members of the DAV that will share real stories about real DAV members about how we impacted their life in the real world. And hopefully that will lead to higher conversion rates as we've seen with some other campaigns that we've implemented that strategy on. But the idea is to not ask them for their address and their specific information until well after their discharge from the military. So we have good information and we can keep following up with them, not only from national, but from the local level as we push these names and addresses out to you. Is that only a good idea? Okay, good stuff. So again, with the trial members and again, we'll use the strategy for other things as well. Cut off there. We're going to shoot these spreadsheets out to to our departments and then they will kind of figure out what's the best strategy to get them out to their individual chapters. They're much more intimately familiar with the lay of the land and their individual jurisdictions than I am because there will be a lot of situations in which certain member prospects, recently discharged veterans will live in kind of that no man's land that isn't within a chapter of jurisdiction, right? So they may have to say, Hey, Chapter 22, we want you to tackle these folks, even though we know they're not in your area. They're a little bit away from you, but let's still reach out to them and invite them to DAV, that sort of thing. So there's going to be lots of discussions happening like that moving forward. Please, please, you know, take part in that stuff, reach out to your departments. They know this is coming, have conversations with them, let them know that you're willing to help, you know, facilitate this. And I think we can do great things together. So I really, truly appreciate any help that you can offer in that regard. So as you know, we have developed a new membership card. You will get when you sign up a new member from the date that we get the application at headquarters. So if you sign up online, it's essentially the following Monday or Thursday, depending on when you sign up, we get that application in or as soon as the paper application hits our doorstep within 30 days. The member, the new member should have his new member recognition letter and his membership card. If you do not see that happening within 30 days, typically what we're seeing is about three weeks. But within 30 days, let me know, give me the specific name of the veteran of the member so that I can track it and see exactly what was going on with that. But that's our goal. If there was any premium item associated with their membership, that will follow on within a month or so once they get their card. So but I please, I would like the feedback if somebody's not seeing their membership card and welcome letter within 30 days of us getting the application. So we launched this when we were at convention last year and between then and now, this video got 400,000 views on Facebook. Very impressive. As I traveled the country, I shared this at midwinter. But as I traveled the country going to different department conventions or conferences, I had many members drag somebody else up by the shirt collar and say, Doug, will you explain to this person that you have to have been in combat to be a member of DAV? No, you don't. Doug, will you explain to this person that your disability has to be service connected by VA to be a member? You know, face palm. No, you don't. So what I decided to do was to partner with our communications department to develop a just a quick little fun video designed for social media that kind of explains who's eligible for DAV membership and what some of the benefits are. Now, since we've developed this video, our benefits packages have changed a little bit. Our member benefits. We're looking at, you know, new agreements with our legacy partners. So you might see some people listed on this video that we no longer have a current agreement on that aren't listed on the member benefits page. But rest assured, that page is quickly being populated with new partners with appropriate agreements that are favorable to DAV and that are aligned with partners that have the same have the same goals in mind that we do. So but I just wanted to share this video with you really quick. Like I said, almost four hundred thousand views, thousands of thousands of shares. So I really have no idea how many millions of impressions that is. But a great little video of the communications department helped me put together. As one of the nation's leading veterans service organizations, DAV successes on behalf of veterans rely solely on the strength and engagement of its members, which help ensure veterans issues are properly addressed in your local community and in Washington. But who are DAV members and how can you become one? Well, first, any service member who is not dishonorably discharged and sustained an injury or illness during their time in the military, whether service connected by the VA or not, or anyone who aggravated a previous injury during his or her time in service is eligible for DAV membership so long as they served during a period of armed conflict. And no, it doesn't have to be direct combat. So what does DAV membership include? It's well known that DAV services, including professional help with VA claims and the transition and employment assistance, DAV provides all veterans at no cost do not require membership in DAV. However, DAV members do get savings on Ford vehicles, exclusive USA rewards credit card points and year round discounted pricing on hotel and rental car rates, just to name a few. You also get a free subscription to DAV magazine. But most importantly, especially if you're helped by DAV, becoming a member gives you the opportunity to pay it forward and add your voice to help your fellow veterans. And how do you become a DAV member? Just log on to DAV dot org slash membership and fill out an application. You can submit it online or send it in the mail. Either way, joining DAV's ranks brings individual perks and strengthens the voices of our nation's veterans in your local community and in Washington. Learn more about becoming a DAV member by visiting DAV dot org slash membership and help fulfill the promises to the men and women who served. Not bad, right? The stuff. Yeah, you can clap for that. And that's the kind of stuff, of course, you want to do with social media. You want it to be quick, hitting, plain, direct. And, you know, you think you're looking at those cookie little stick figures that they wouldn't have the impact that they do, but people love them. So it's great stuff and our communications team does a great job. So we talked about earlier about March membership madness and utilizing the online applications. Again, we want to do as much as we possibly can online because all of the metrics tell me that when we have them online with recurring credit card, and this is this should be obvious, but when they have the recurring credit card, it's kind of like fire and forget and they they pay off their membership, right, instead of having to send us in a check whenever they get their quarterly statement. You know, I know there still are some folks out there that that use checks, but, you know, if I'm making a payment on something, I just throw it on the credit card and just know that it's coming out every month and it's easy peasy, right. So all of the online applications require a credit card with the exception of our over 80s. There is an option for over 80. It's the first question asked when you go to the the online application where people make a mistake sometimes when you click the over 80 button because it asks you are you over 80 years old yes or no. When you click that button, give it a second to transfer to change to the other form. If you don't do that, then we get people calling us the headquarters. Why is it asking me for a credit card for over 80? So you got to give it a form a second to change depending on your internet connection. It may lag a little bit, but just a little pro tip there. But the online application is the way to go. So whether you access it through your phone, a pad, using our mobile app that I'll talk about here in a second on how to get that on there. And please don't let the fact that somebody doesn't have an email account dissuade you from using the online application. We have a naming convention here that I've got at the bottom of the picture. So you know first name, last name, zip code at davdonor.org. So that's all you got to do. And that will let the system know that this person does not have a unique email address. But it'll still function. We do not want to use your own email address. You don't want to use the department of the chapter's email address. That causes all kinds of problems because typically that's how the system recognizes that person. That's the unique identifier for that person. So create the unique identifier this way or just get comfortable creating them a Yahoo or a Gmail or an Outlook account so that they have their own email account and show them how to use email. But certainly if push comes to shove, use the naming convention there. For me it'd be Douglas Wells 41042 at davdonor.org. And I'm unique now. Okay. So don't let not having an email address dissuade you. Don't let the member prospect not having an email address dissuade you from utilizing that. Just don't use yours or somebody else's. So the mobile device application or we call the mobile app sometimes we refer to as the member app. It's not a true app that you would get from the Apple store or the droid store. Really what we're doing is we're just creating a shortcut on your desktop to the mobile friendly app web application for the DAV membership application. And this works for both droid and Apple products. So essentially all you do is if you have an Apple phone you launch Safari in the in the web address you just type DAV.org slash member app. Do not use WWW or anything like that. Just DAV.org slash member app. If you put it in there correctly you'll see it'll say secure or something or other and then you'll get the the Apple come out and a little light box will drop down. The same difference for droid type in DAV.org slash member app and the same thing happens the little light box that drops down. As you can see there with the Apple X buy it it gives you the instructions on how to save it to your home screen. So for the Apple you know you can save this form to your home screen to sign up DAV members on the go to do this tap the little box with the arrow come out of it and then hit add to home screen. It's that simple it's a couple of taps. Once you do that the app will close out and you'll see the icon on your phone. It's almost the same exact process for the droid. Instead of hitting the little arrow at the bottom you hit the little three dots up on the tight right hand corner to get the drop down menu hit add to home screen add add you're done. Okay so if you have issues with that you can see Heather Robin myself will be happy to stay and put that on everybody's phone in here if you'd like it and then you can teach other people how to do it as well. So we developed a little video related to the mobile device icon and by the way these videos are available on the DAV's YouTube channel so if you go to conferences or do information seminars at your chapter you can certainly pull this stuff up and use it as part of your presentation but this is another great little video that our communication staff put together for us. At more than one point three million strong from all our time generations DAV members are the lifeblood of the organization. That's why recruiting new members is so important and with today's technology there's always a quick and easy way to sign up. Log on to DAV.org slash member app from your mobile device that's DAV.org slash member app. And it connects you to a mobile application for DAV membership. It's just a couple basic questions about the applicant and their service that takes only a few minutes to complete. Just remember to save the application to your phone or tablet by following the instructions on your Apple or droid device. That way you can easily access it the next time you come in contact with a potential DAV member. Remember DAV.org forward slash member app and save it to your phone or tablet. DAV always welcomes new members and with your help we can continue to provide them a lifetime of support. So again please use that to encourage folks to utilize the online application. I can't I can't stress how important it is. To further incentivize you to do this how many people out here like getting the points to use in the store. Remember to raise your hand raise it high. There you go. So most of you right. So I don't know if you knew this or not. Hopefully you did. Hopefully folks have shared it with you if you haven't been to one of my seminars recently but beginning October 16 I changed the award scheme for points. So if you under the old system if you signed up somebody regardless if it was on paper or online if they became a part life you got one point if they can when they converted the full life you got another point for a total of two points if they signed up as a full life member out of the gate you got two points right. So beginning October 1st of 16 for online only if you signed them up online when they become a part life member you still only get one point but when they convert to full life membership you get two more points for a total of three points. So if you don't sign them up online you're robbing yourself of a point right. So sign them up online can you tell I want you to sign up folks online now. Right good stuff okay. So get them online I'm telling you your lives will be much easier there may be part life members on your roles for a while but not nearly as many because guess what much many more of them are going to convert to full life membership. I promise you that's what the metrics tell us. How many people in here by show of hand have used the new member orientation guide. Yeah it's getting better getting better. So good I appreciate I appreciate that. So the Inter-Membership Committee an iteration ago did a lot of hard work on this guide. The idea behind this guide is the the chapter should should take it and modify the the new member guide the mentoring guide and the PowerPoint presentation to the specifics of their chapter. These are all in edible editable word and PowerPoint formats I want you to change them and modify them to demonstrate the uniqueness of your locality of your chapter what's the history chapter explore the richness of that. If you've got strong relationships with the VAVS program highlight that if you've got strong relationships with the local veterans employment representative and helping veterans acquire employment highlight that highlight the things that make your particular chapter different and special and unique because that's the rich stuff that's important that continues to to you know be inviting to new members and that's what they want to see and let them know what you're about as you're encouraging them to continue to participate in your chapters. If you go to the members only section you're of the DAV dot org website you're going to see all of these resources available to you you do need your membership number to gain access to it but it is in the members only section of the of the website so you have both guides in there the PowerPoint and there's also a recording of a webinar I did a while back explaining in greater detail everything I just let you know so you know make sure you take a gander at it and you know let us know if you have any feedback for how we should improve it for everybody's use so Warren was an integral part of that he'd love to know that as well so for all of you that have already used it please you know bend Warren's ear a little bit here and he can take notes and make recommendations moving forward as to how we should modify it but that's a great resource don't let it just sit there the your membership committee did a lot of hard work on that and I hope everybody uses it because I think it's a great tool and I think if we you know invite them to understand the richness in the the diversity of the AV and the uniqueness about who we are and what we do and how we tackle things in all the programs that we have to offer they're going to be much more inclined to be active members and help us out right so that's what it's all about so as I'm coming to the end here because I like to save a lot of time if we can for for questions and answers and I just won't be available but my counterparts on the inner membership committee will be here as well and again no wrong door approach if there's something we can't ask for you will get you to the right person that can but as I'm coming to the end here I want to share something with you and some of you may have already seen this because I I use them in a lot of presentations that I do but I think his message is so powerful to which Jones if you've picked up a copy of National Geographic in the last you know 30 40 years you've seen his work he's a photographer Nat Geo and he's kind of encapsulated a lot of the life lessons that he's learned throughout his travels around the world and I found one that was particularly impressive and I thought it truly related to membership recruitment and all the things that we're trying to do within the but particularly membership recruitment and so I just wanted to kind of share this message with you if you'll indulge me for just a minute you know my very first published photographs were on the pages of the National Geographic I still find that hard to believe I mean it was crazy but that's what happened I was 26 years old and Bob Gilca the head of photography at the geographic called me back to their headquarters in Washington DC to give me my marching orders and I remember I remember standing in the lobby of what they call Explorers Hall and I was looking at at giant globes and dog sleds and submersibles and flags planted on Everest and surrounded by the most beautiful photographs I'd ever seen in my life how was I going to prove that I was worthy of working here and then I was taken upstairs and into Bob's office Bob was a blunt man just straight and to the point and honestly a little scary well that morning I was completely unprepared for what he said to me he stopped me cold he changed the way I did everything from that day forward he looked at me from over his desk and he said you know DeWitt the people who photograph for this magazine are the best in the world you don't have to prove yourself I don't have to prove myself I mean honestly that's all I've been thinking about since I got the assignment you don't have to prove yourself he continued but by God every day you had better improve yourself the words went in don't prove yourself improve yourself Bob was still talking he said you know I want you to spend your time every day trying to be better than you were yesterday if you learn something that'll help the others well then share it that way we'll all get better faster don't prove yourself improve yourself otherwise you're fired first lesson right out of the blocks I don't know how many times I've thought about it how many times I've acted on it since that day in Bob's office don't prove yourself improve yourself and you know living that lesson I've come to see that life really is a lot more about cooperation than it is about competition it wasn't proving myself or taking others down that allowed me to succeed it was simply consciously continuously improving myself refining my skills honing my wisdom focusing my vision ultimately the only person I was trying to surpass was me don't prove improve great stuff right yeah you can clap for that too but what's great so obviously nobody in this room was in danger of being fired except maybe me if you tell Barry I did a bad job so but yeah and you know what nobody in this room has to prove anything to every anybody because you've already proven everything you have to prove by your service and sacrifice however I will challenge you all to improve if you recruited one person last year I challenge you to recruit two if you recruited ten I can challenge you to recruit twenty double up your efforts I think we can all have challenging but attainable goals and you know the other key point that he makes here is about you know sharing that knowledge using events like national convention your department conventions even your chapter meetings you know we all love the the competition amongst recruiters and things of that nature but if you are a successful recruiter who's winning recruiter of the year year in and year out share what you're doing with everybody else ask to do a seminar or recruitment seminar share your ideas with your fellow members at your department convention or at a chapter meeting because that's the only way we're all going to get better this stuff shouldn't be rocket science it's not rocket science and it shouldn't be a state secret if you're having success recruiting please share that information not only with your counterparts but with me as well so that we can share with everybody is a best practice so I invite you to contact me if you have any questions or concerns before I take questions I just want to leave you with a quick story uh... so a few uh... a while back on the way home from church uh... during church there were some some uh... children that were being a little noisy and uh... having a little fit maybe not being as reverend as they they could have been and so I asked my kids you know why it was important to be uh... reverend and quiet church and and uh... you know they were giving me answers that that made me proud as a father you know that we want to be polite so other people can hear the lesson and uh... we want to give other people the chance to reflect and uh... you know feel what the lessons supposed to be making them feel and and i get to my youngest son garrick in uh... who's about eight at the time and I said son why do you think it's important to be quiet in church and he said so we don't wake up the people that are sleeping dad so and hopefully and i didn't put anybody here to sleep i hope that you uh... think this information was was good and useful again i will uh... share this presentation with anybody just shoot me an email at dwells at dv dot org uh... dwells at dv you can't you can't uh... forget it so uh... i invite you to uh... to uh... come ask us questions or uh... afterward and we'll take some questions now while we have some time this mic is hot so uh... if you're gonna ask this question please use the mic i can't reach it it's too tall there we go that's better uh... debolson department of massachusetts membership chair for the department i actually want to speak to minnesota weren't they the number one five years in a row in their division shouldn't well they were they're the ones still getting the award five years in a row shouldn't they be sitting up there actually telling us what they're doing that that's a great suggestion who should i kick off the inner membership committee but i did i was was speaking to a few people in another just a suggestion it's a good way to have colleges most of the colleges have veterans groups in them that to go to the veterans groups a local one also don't put the person in your chapter if they don't live in your area they won't be you're still going to get credit for will put in a chapter that's close to you great suggestions all uh... to respond to the issue on the uh... college campuses are national service offices uh... do a great job of reaching out to college campuses via our mobile service offices and they'll schedule stops there uh... we're increasing our efforts with that you know a lot of times uh... you know the uh... administrators at the college campuses aren't as inviting as we'd like them to be but we're working on that so you had great minds think alike paul vermin adjutant for louisiana now i've got a question the trial members are they put into a a chapter or are they just floating out there because if they're put into a chapter when we sign them up that means we can't just sign them to a chapter we have to transfer because because of a glitch there are a few trial members here there that are associated with the chapter that should not be the case they should all belong to the department or in the national at large uh... but we are going to share like i said uh... based on zip codes all of that information with the departments and then you will disseminate it down to the chapters what i'm saying is when we signed them up uh... we signed them up as new members going into chapter what i know you will sign them up as brand new members and you will sign them up to the most appropriate chapter okay we won't be transferred they will not be transferred they will be new paid members okay thank you can you can you can you flip it on see if it's got to be turned on i thought it was on they said it was hot paul can you come grab this mic we'll just let him use that can you hear me yes sir go ahead oh down here okay my name's john pellet here i'm from chapter five in los angeles california we have uh... what's the basically the time frame between when an applicant he mails it in and the time they get it back and they know they're in the d-a-v okay so what should be happening is and that's what i was mentioning earlier i mean it's uh... the time frame because i mailed some in back in february and they didn't receive them probably to maybe last month and then i had a lot of them that went when i mailed them and they had the chapter they went to different chapters and i had to call up and find out what couldn't i had to go to make sure i had all my receipts for to get them in and then we had it finally had it corrected that's one and then i had one person i argued you have cash money i had one i told her no to go get a money order and then mail it because you know you never know somebody might have some fingers well she didn't and she sent the money now she's complaining and been bitching at me about she thinks maybe i took her money you know so i mean i don't know what's going on so a couple things let me ask for the second one first never mail cash that's the last thing you want to see check money order cashier check but it has cash the paperwork right i understand credit card cash money order right so i don't want them mailing cash though so that's what i'm saying the forums are multiple use so there are sometimes events where people can take cash and they can go ahead and the who's ever organizing the event in person to take cash and then they go get a money order and mail in all the applications okay so that's how that should work so to answer your first question so in other words i'm going to take i'm going to take forty dollars i'm going to take it out of my pocket and i'm going to get the tour no i didn't say that so what we can do you know you can give me the name and we can research it at headquarters uh... there there may be an issue that we can resolve at headquarters but you don't need to reach in your pocket and get anything okay so i'm just saying for future reference don't mail cash and continue to do what you did discourage folks from mailing cash okay okay so but give me the specific name of that person and and we can research it when you get home shoot me an email and we'll research it and then i had another one who didn't receive this thing in a time frame he called his congressman his congressman called me wanted to find out what's going on and i had to explain to him i had to go up to the office i took the uh... his receipt with me that he had or i had to cap you know and that showed and finally they said oh okay and uh... i'm today right today i'm still hoping that he got it because i'm not going to go home and listen to senator night again you know what happened and you know again we can beat the specific scenarios to death but i want to stick to generalities here get with me or robin so that we can talk specific issues but to your first question when we get when when an application hits our doorstep then the new members should have their membership card in their welcome letter within three weeks to thirty days okay should not take longer than thirty days if you see that that has happened give me the specific name so i can backtrack and check what what's going on the only time that that should ever be an issue is during your end processes when people are sending us you know much more many more applications than we typically get and my membership staff is kind of overwhelmed with the processing okay because a lot of times that's at the same time that we've got our spring mailing coming back and things of that nature so that's a good problem to have because we're processing so many applications right but typically the rest of the year should be within thirty days that they get their welcome letter in their card if you see something different let me know but i need specifics that's great okay good afternoon i'm jane balton from district eight i'm from district eight we're in a real location and it's hard for us to find people can you explain to me a formula because we're given a number that we're supposed to recruit during the year is there a formula that tells how we get to that number it's secret well you don't know me but i always want to know the why it's not a secret it never should have been a secret and i've been preaching it since i've been the membership director so here it is you ready fifty five percent of your part life membership total plus your full life membership total on july one whatever that number is that your goal for the membership year that's the current way that we that we uh... determined goal so now i'm a marine forgive me so i'm gonna use round numbers because i don't matter well maybe we understand you okay so if you have a thousand full life members in your chapter and you have one hundred part life members the number we're currently using is fifty five percent fifty five percent of one hundred is fifty five so your goal would be one thousand fifty five full life members at the end of the membership here thank you but we're gonna change that so don't get comfortable with that my next question to that one is when are you changing this uh... hopefully before next year so we did that's one of the things that is the major project for the inner membership committee this year uh... is to determine a new way to determine gold in a new way to you know how you should pursue goal as i was mentioning earlier i think our focus should be on attracting new members new paid members whether they're paid partial life or paid full life we when we focus on nothing but the partial life it's kind of like preaching to the choir right we don't want to do that we want to get out uh... amongst the masses and and get as many of the new folks in as we can so what that will exactly look like i don't know but we're going to give you the tools you need to be successful while doing it we're going to get create a target rich environment for you you're not just gonna bounce around the ether hoping to run into somebody that's eligible for membership i'm gonna give you a specific list of names addresses email addresses and phone numbers that you can tackle thank you yes sir i'm gonna come forward i want to give you my card this means he wants a phone call back because i've developed a sort of a sixty second uh... elevator presentation have you look at the back of the card first with both our logos on it i'd like to see both our logos on something that presenting also but uh... do you remember this blue logo disabled american veterans that's our that's our steel it's still valid stand back disabled american veterans we've been around since nineteen twenty we were congressionally approved to help disabled veterans and their families this is our new logo don't be afraid of it it's disabled american veterans and here is when i'm i'm with chapter in california this is my chapter's meeting dates and where it is turn to the front of the card right above the green on the bottom it says go to dv dot org if you'd like to join hit the membership button you need a sponsor there's my sponsor number and there's my name thank you very much sir he likes the points get everybody when you're sitting in the b.a. when you're at one of the b.a. clinics or hospitals ask the people next to you are you a member of d.a.b are you a member of d.a.b carry cards with you and get them and give them cards i'll get up in the clinic and i'll pitch to four people at a time five people i'll add to each one of cards like i just did with you that's what i do but i would really like to see both our logos somewhere the old logo and the new one i know it's tough we've been working on the change yes sir take care joel quartermanch chapter fifteen virginia when does my unit actually learn my chapter bite my tongue when does my chapter learn that there are trial members in our local area and how are we notified so uh... the departments have been provided with the trial member list by zip codes that belong to each particular state so your department leadership has those lists now and they can uh... uh... break those out and give you the ones that are in your in your area uh... so just look contact your department folks we are working towards helping them facilitate that moving forward we're gonna have some national conference calls we're going to develop some best practices things that things of that nature this is a totally new process but if you're eager to get a jump on it please reach out to your department and uh... i'm sure they can share that list with you right away thank you hi uh... my name is uh... tracy williams hi tracy and uh... i'm clueless as to what chapter what anything i'm in except my name tag says something so i'm brand new i'm only here is the first meeting i've ever been to chapter why is anything and i have to be honest the only reason why i'm here is because uh... i noticed on the calendar that it it was right after uh... another conference i was at so i just extended my my flight uh... mic so that's my comment i also think that this is was at the opening and this is a very very well run conference i'm very very impressed and so it won't be my last all great terrific thank you my only uh... and i'm very impressed that you have uh... women's issue they wish i would have known that this was gonna happen because i would have stayed tomorrow too we've been carrying that banner for many years and that's awesome my only uh... i guess complaint and i hate this kind of forum to complain here comes the but yeah i i got a welcome packet like you said it was timely like you said i was very impressed with the quickness and i was excited to you know contact my local chapter that i was placed in and the phone number was wrong so i'm clueless to who this commander is because his phone numbers wrong and uh... i think even his name is wrong and uh... and in the information that we got it doesn't tell me you know how to get a hold of anything in my state statewide is so i guess i would really have liked to have had in my packet a list of my all the state information you know all the local chapters in case i run into this i've been to this address twice and nobody has been there and nobody answers the phone number and now i don't know where what the what state are you in what department washington state okay so here's what you do i mean of course our welcome letter needs to be tailored to the chapter that you're going to belong to write uh... unfortunately uh... sometimes this does happen uh... some chapters don't meet monthly they meet every other month or sometimes once every three months uh... and they're busy doing other good work away from the chapter house but certainly if you go to dv dot org uh... and click and hover over the membership tab there's a find a local chapter tab click on that and you can find the contact information for any chapter in the state plus uh... the department so for your uh... situation what i recommend is contacting the department and they can help you get a hold of the right folks and determine is the chapter you know having some issue or is it the one that's that's most viable for you and uh... maybe you need to be in a different chapter well i i guess i didn't want it to be individual you know i just think that when you send this information out to any new member because uh... when you become a new member you don't want to have to work to get to the place of wanting to volunteer so if you if you just included a here's a list in your specific state or your specific department because you have fifty two departments i heard if you include that in the mailer that would make it a little easier for us to not have to work to be able to volunteer no that's that's the only that's great feedback uh... warren's got a comment on that i'll give the mic to is there anybody in this room that's from the state of washington that young ladies standing in front of me right there would you would you could be willing to hook her up and and and connected to the two ceo's to let you guys right there go get a hold of them and let them let them be your temporary mentors to get you started with the dvd okay alright thank you okay uh... couple couple more questions here than we have to let the uh... the next seminar have the room yes afternoon my name is dave wence and uh... chapter six in oregon also on the state council i said uh... my name is dave wence on chapter six in oregon i'm also on the state council uh... chapter six is located in selam oregon in in my area we have five correctional institutions now my problem is that i will go into those correctional institutions to tap into the members that the potential members there the problem is they don't have any cash immediately available to them to be able to pay for membership i can they will i can get have a sign off of an authorization have taken out of their their funds so well how do i go about doing this can i provide them with the trial membership is that possible until the funds catch up do i hold the application until they tell the funds to have the funds redirected to the chapter i don't know how to proceed yeah that that's it that's a tough one uh... you know if you send me an email on that about trial memberships for folks in correctional institutions and i'll float that past uh... our leadership including ed hardman our inspector general to get some feedback on it i don't want to give you an answer on that right now uh... we do do trial memberships for folks that are attending our job fairs uh... yeah as well as our folks that are transitioning out of the military so perhaps we could expand it that way but you mean email d wells at dv dot org and i'll i'll get a considered for you but uh... yeah that's a tough not to crack i know okay even better not to get the app a card makes it easier for me because my memory is not all that there's a card there you go thank you sir so these will be the last questions that are in line here i'm time for reason from a late better still lower alabama that is chapter nine we have eighteen hundred eighty members are a little chapter i'll be i'll be seen in january my question is this do you have a list of the members at large for our state that might be in our area and if so how'd i get a hold of it uh... you either shoot me an email or give me a call or call any of my uh... staff on the membership team and we can get that to you straight away roger that thank you uh... john martinez chapter two uh... public all around uh... this is a membership question but it's pertaining to the uh... reporting of a death i called up and i spoke to one of the girls membership and she told me that i had to have a death certificate to send in but i see nothing on that anywhere so that threw me for a loop for the first time so so somebody on my staff told you had to have a dust one of the girls that uh... at the membership number when i called in well that's that's incorrect no you do not if uh... especially if you're listed on the officer port and you're reporting a deceased member to we we take your word for it all right thank you very much sir hello again i know i'm sorry i was in another meeting now you're going to ask everybody if i'm gonna ask something that was already covered last year we were talking about the dvd three sixty that i thought was going to be implemented pretty soon to where we could do it like a mass email to all of our members we wouldn't have to like ask for a list email and all that kind of stuff please help me with that because there i was in the other one where we're talking about tweed facebook and that's all good but a lot of our members were lucky if they email so if i can send out a man mass email you know from some generated list from headquarters it would be so much easier so please help me mister welles so i can get you a list of all the emails that i have amongst your membership and then how you utilize that uh... okay yes and i've gotten spreadsheets before and i cut and paste and i do it the hard way but what i'm talking about is some kind of program right they could be accessible to where i can just go here's my chapter click mass email and i don't have to cut and paste and all that as i mentioned earlier great minds think alike that is in the plans we've already got the user story developed for that as part of dvd three sixty unfortunately like with most technological initiatives uh... it's you know it it has to take what it takes uh... we were hopeful to have something out by the end of this year that's probably not going to happen we're we're going to it's going to it's a little bit more on the horizon uh... hopefully twenty nineteen though uh... but it it's a little bit the ways down the road all right thank you sir yes sir yes ma'am well folks uh... again i truly appreciate you uh... uh... coming today uh... you know we'll be around to answer questions don't forget about robin and heather thank you so much for coming and give yourself a round of applause for the great work you do thank you