 Hey, hello everybody, it's Brian Levin, DAV, and today we're coming to you live with Doug Wells, DAV's National Membership Director and also a Marine Corps Veteran, so simplified. As many of you know, usually this time of year we would all gather in person. This year is going to be Dallas Test for National Convention. Unfortunately, for reasons that too many of us are too familiar with the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to cancel that, but with DAV being a member-driven organization, the information is really what is important, just as much as camaraderie is the knowledge. So Doug, with that in mind, usually we'd be on the ground in Dallas, Texas this year and you have your membership seminar and divulge a lot of information and new things that are going on. But for starters right here today, for those who might not be aware or new to DAV, why is membership in an organization like DAV so important and so valuable for veterans across the globe and their families? Well, first of all, Brian, thanks for that intro and sympathy to you. The health and well-being of our members is paramount in all the decisions that DAV makes because indeed, to your question, our members are much more valuable to us and the country as a whole in the fight. And if they're on the sideline because they're dealing with an illness, then that's not going to help continue our mission of serving those that have served and taken care of disabled veterans and their families. So we need to ensure that we're still able to invite as many folks to the DAV as possible. We're going to talk about it with a lot of the tools that we've made available to our member recruiters to do just that safely during these unusual times. But certainly it's important for folks that are eligible for membership in the DAV wartime disabled veterans to join because we are stronger together. Of course, as we do the great work that we do in Washington, D.C., as well as in state and local areas advocating for disabled veterans and their families and ensuring that they receive the benefits that they've earned by virtue of their service, the more weight we have behind our message via our membership, the more successful our campaigns are. Our elected officials definitely sit up and take note when DAV speaks and it's almost entirely the result of the strong membership that we have that in the DAV. Not only the strong membership, but the strong and supportive vocal membership. No, I think you're right. The vocal aspect is critical. And thanks for that kind of laying the foundation for some of the people that might be watching that are familiar. And with that in mind, with membership being so important, how are your members and DAV members out there in the field or recruiters, what are some of the tools that are out at their disposal to kind of highlight those reasons and get that in front of the veterans that they may come across? Right. So we've been working very hard over the last few years to embrace digital platforms to make everything mobile friendly. We'll talk some more about that here as we get going in the presentation. But certainly we have spared no expense in making sure that our members have all the tools necessary to successfully recruit into the organization because when a member who understands the importance and value of DAV invites another member indirectly, chances are that that new member is going to be more successful within the organization and be an even more valuable resource and supporter of the organization as we go about our work every single day. It is very difficult to get things done, especially at the grassroots level, without strong involved members. And when you have somebody offering that personal invitation into the organization and explaining to them the importance of DAV, mentoring them throughout the ranks, that person will then turn into a lifetime supporter of the organization. And there isn't a dollar figure that you can place on that. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. Obviously, I mean, not to beat the drum about COVID-19, but obviously it's forced not just DAV, but companies and organizations and charities across the country to kind of change their protocols in certain ways and how they do business. And recruiting kneecap to kneecap as they would say and into an organization like this can be challenging when you're not having those chapter meetings maybe on the local level or the departments and the reps and the leaderships, not maybe able to get in the same room and hash out some strategic plans. So these digital tools that you talk about like recruiter warriors one, which you can go into a little bit, that gives you that freedom and connection or ability to connect while being socially distanced as we have become so accustomed to. So how would you say those tools have been able to pivot or how has that helped DAV and your recruiter stay fluent during such an high time? Well, it's actually been pretty tremendous actually. Our digital recruitments continue to grow. Our grassroots recruiters are continuing to embrace those tools more and more as they go about their recruiting machinations. And then we're also doing things to help facilitate that for them and encourage the camaraderie and a little bit of a little bit of a healthy competition, friendly competition between our departments. I'll mention real quick our March membership madness tournament where we break up all of our departments into a bracket style tournament format and let them face off against one another until we have a winner. This year we had a brand new winner emerge, the department of Colorado. So congratulations to them. Typically we would give them their trophy and whatnot as they came out for our annual Commanders and Adjudance meeting. But as you know, that's been canceled as well because of our current situation. So we will offer them tremendous thanks and gratitude and congratulations for an outstanding effort on the department as a whole and especially their recruiters amongst the service officer ranks, chapter department and national service officers who really stepped up to the plate to bring that win home for the department of Colorado. So it was really nice to now that's awesome. Congratulations to them and you know, as veterans ourselves a competition that can bring out that fighting spirit on us all. So it's nice to see that kind of injects some fun into it and also obviously the higher purpose and meaning behind it all is what drives the day. But going back to recruit a warrior for a brief moment, how does that work? I understand that there is a competition that will be coming down the pipe here in the near future. Can you explain to our viewers a little bit about how that works the referral link process and then the competition you have coming up? Right, absolutely. So recruit a warrior is just another arrow that we're putting into the quiver of our member recruiters. So essentially what they do is they go to dav.org slash warrior. There is a social hub screen that'll come up there. They can do some fun stuff like download frames for their Facebook things of that nature. But the main thing they want to do is input their email address, especially if they had signed up online themselves, input their email address, and they will be sent a link from the recruit a water site automatically. And the link will tell them two things. One, it'll say you're good to go. Here's your personalized secure recruitment link. Or we don't have you in our system. Here's what you do to get signed up. And then we can take care of all of that here at the membership department at DAV National Headquarters. So they just got to email us or give us a call as directed to by the response when they input their email address. Not all of our members have signed up online, obviously, so they may not be in the system currently. Notice why we just build them a profile. The thing I really want to hammer home, before we talk about the contest, is that these recruit award links are active all the time. And we're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff throughout the year. We had a really good success amount of success with this when we did it, going into the holidays last year. So I'm hopeful, you know, we'll have, you know, that same success and even more replicated as we do it this year. But the great thing about the recruit a water link, once you get that all squared away, is it allows you a one click capability to go ahead and either email your link, or share it on your social media, Facebook, or Twitter. We're exploring some other options potentially. But those are the three primary ways you can also text your link to somebody that you're looking to recruit. So it's very secure. It's absolutely secure. That way you're not having to put somebody's credit card info into your own phone. It brings that peace of mind. But it is the easiest way to recruit someone. And you can also sign them up for as little as $10 a month. So that's especially helpful for those that, you know, need to have a little more flexibility with respect to their payment purposes. So, you know, I just want to take a minute to plug the DAV do's video. If people wonder why, you know, DAV has dues for membership. It's that's the primary mechanism that we use to help facilitate funding of our grassroots efforts. So I don't know of another organization that does it this way, but we take in these dues and then redistribute a good portion of them back to the grassroots organizations, the chapters and departments that that member belongs to. So the leaders in that area can best determine how to utilize those resources. So if they have needs to cover for a transportation network fan or to buy a service officer, a computer because the VA is gone, totally digital now, to buy supplies to, you know, to do what they've got to do to be successful in their area. It's a lot better for them to help make that determination into us just to dictate from here in our our perch in national headquarters what they need on the ground. So the local leaders know best what they need on the ground. So take a look at that dues video. Pardon me. If anybody has questions about what dues are utilized for, it's a great 45 second video, I think is what we got it down to. Perfect for sharing on social media as well. But the answer is all the questions that that folks have as to what DAV does with our dues. Yeah, and you can find that video and we can't put a link to it. It's also on DAV's YouTube page. If you just search membership dues, you should find it pretty easily. And on that note, not to make light of it, because I mean it is a serious topic. We talk about fraud, but there are member advantages as well. When you become a member of DAV and one of those is, I think, identity guard and identity theft protection. I just want to give that plug. But on that note, what are some of the you can briefly run down some of the membership benefits or advantages that members do get? One quick, I also wanted to point out on the Recruit Award link before we move down on that. When our members recruit folks remember, they still get the recruitment points. So for every member that they recruit, they do get their recruitment points. In addition to any other opportunities we have for special programs that we're running and I don't think we actually mentioned on the Recruiter Warrior Challenge, that is going to go from October 1st through November 30th. So for every member that one of our member recruiters bring into the organization, they will get one entry toward a $1,000 cash prize. So pretty exciting stuff that they can use that. However, they want to use it. Moving forward, Lisa Gregory out of the Department of Virginia won that last year. She had I think it was about 20 or so entries. So she really bolstered her chances there and it worked out. So I really appreciate her and her efforts and everybody that supported her. But we're doing that again October 1st through November 30th. We'll do a live drawing on Facebook or something again. And you'll have that cash or right in the right in time for that Christmas bill. Exactly. Yeah, I'm glad you went back to that as I got a little ahead of ourselves with the member benefits and advantages. So I'm glad you went back and closed that little please get involved in that Recruiter Warrior Challenge. I don't know anybody that's turned down a thousand dollars and you're also hoping veterans at the same time. But what are if you don't mind just briefly because we do got to try to keep these things as short as we can. But what are some of the member benefits to joining DAV as far as the discounts and the partners? Sure. We refer to it as our member advantages program. In our member advantage partners are folks who are aligned with DAV and our mission are very supportive of our mission. And if they're not contributing outright to DAV, then they are somebody with whom we have an affinity agreement, meaning every time a member utilizes one of their programs, DAV will get a portion of those proceeds to help then further fund these programs and services. So it's a win-win-win. So, you know, we've got great partners, T-Mobile, USAA, Ford, 1-800-Flowers, Identity Yard, you mentioned earlier. If you have to do an interstate move, North American Van Lines is there. Quicken Loans, we've got our newest prescription drug benefit is now available. Check that out. Rental vehicles with Avis and budget. Medical Guardian, if you need some support at home, you know, if you have an elderly member or you're worried about falling or something like that, you can go ahead and engage their services at a substantially discounted rate. So every time somebody uses one of these services, again, if they're not already a traditional partner that's been supporting DAV in many other ways, we have an affinity agreement with them. So if you're getting ready to buy, you know, flowers for the anniversary or whatever it is, give 1-800-Flowers a look because DAV will then get a portion of those proceeds so that we can then again further fund DAV's programs and services. So that's, you know, that's what we're doing with all of our member-advantaged partners and they're being incredibly supportive of our mission and what we're trying to do every single day to take care of them. Certainly. And thanks to all of our member-advantaged partners for what they do and their cause to help DAV and veterans alike. Now, transition here briefly before we wrap up back into the actual recruiting aspect of any new membership. Can you tell us a little bit about Hot List and how those can be obtained by interested members? Sure. So the Hot List is a concept that we came up with a couple of years ago. And what I wanted to do is to connect our member recruiters to the greatest degree I could with those that are eligible for membership. You know, years past we had really kind of just relied on our member recruiters happening to bump into somebody that they figured out was eligible for membership. Well, we know that there's a lot of folks out of out there that are eligible for membership and we've got their, you know, contact info some more than others, but we can reach them. So I wanted to put those folks in touch with our member recruiters. And so through the authorities at the chapter or the department, their officers who could, you know, keep control of these lists, they can request them and then allow their member recruiters to go ahead and reach out to these folks. Now, it's my humble opinion that when we invite folks to the organization, they're going to be a lot more amenable and eager to join if they understand the value of DAV. So if we, you know, come at them and say, hey, are you getting through your hospital appointments to and from, have you had somebody look at your claim, you know, can we help you out with that? Is there a volunteer opportunity that we can have to, if you need your gutters, clean the pipe, fix whatever it might be through our LVAP program. There are so many things that our local members, our chapter members who have service ingrained in them are looking for opportunities to do once they have that opportunity to serve that person that's been served. And, you know, he's going to have a better understanding of who DAV is, not just at the national level with the great work that we do advocating in D.C. and around the country, but also what we're doing, you know, with our next door name and helping them out because it's really when you boil it down, it's all about the community and the people that you're serving right next door, right. So if we can connect them with these folks, give them opportunities to serve and then reach out and say, hey, we certainly love you to come to the chapter meeting consider joining, you know, becoming one of the many here. And, you know, because we're stronger together. As I mentioned earlier, I certainly think that that is a better strategy to recruit folks rather than, you know, someone signing up for membership, which we appreciate, you know, anybody that wants to sign up, we're obviously, you know, very appreciative of that, but we want folks to be involved. And if you can show them the value that not only is their investment in DAV financially going to reap them, but also the return on their time, which is almost more valuable than money today. People are so busy. So if we can invite them in and with all of that understanding, then again, they're just going to be, you know, they're going to be more productive members, supportive member, and they're going to be happier to within the organization and a rising tide lifts all boats. I'm certainly a big advocate of this. So that's what the Hollisauce is. It's a way for us to connect them, connect our member recruiters and department chapter leaders with these folks that we know are eligible for membership in the DAV so they can take a targeted approach to inviting folks into the organization. All they need to do to get those is either they can send in the membership list request form and let us know what zip codes they want or for. Just give us a call at 888-236-8313 at the membership department here or shoot us an email at membership public at DAVemail.org and we will get it all figured out for them, but it's the request has got to come from a chapter department officer. Okay. All valuable information there makes a lot of sense, especially, you know, as you said, kind of the investor, the buy-in, let them understand the importance or still then the why. Everybody has a why and why they want to do this, why they want to be involved with DAV in that case. And lastly here, before I let you go, Doug, and let you get back to the daily grind and back to your work at hand, there's a new initiative from my understanding that is actually kind of geared towards the internal individuals, veterans that are already members. It's called Warriors Club and it's a way for them to even further elevate their cause within the organization, if you will. But being the subject matter expert, would you mind telling our viewers a little bit about that and what that entails? Sure. We partnered with our fundraising folks on this initiative. As I mentioned earlier with our membership dues, we bring those in and then we shoot money back out to our field so our local leaders can best determine, you know, how to spend that money out there where it's best needed. You know, for a while now, we've been distributing essentially twice as much as we've been taking in. And that's not a sustainable model, obviously, that had a little bit to do with our recent dues increase. But this is another way in which we can hopefully continue to stabilize our life membership fund to ensure that that resource is there to support those local initiatives of DAD as we continue to move on and take care of the next generations of disabled veterans and their families. So as you mentioned, this is an opportunity that's exclusive to DAD full-life members. So of course, we want folks to pay off their membership prior to, you know, engaging in the Warriors Club. It supports DAD at the local level, as I mentioned. You know, we have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of members that we're already giving monthly to the organization through other mechanisms that we have unsolicited. So that just told us that there was an additional untapped resource here from the fundraising standpoint to continue to support DAD's programs and services that, you know, we had a great opportunity to take advantage of to make sure that we are preserving this great program. So essentially, what we're asking for is a minimum of $20, pardon me, $21 each month or more if folks can afford it. But these resources would go towards rehabilitation and counseling program support, free rides to and from the medical veterans medical points via transportation network, providing support to, you know, veterans, hospitals and nursing homes, career training and job placement, obviously benefits representation at the grassroots level with our chapter in department service officers, legislative advocacy and on and on and on. There's just so much work that DAD does, but that's just to name a few. So if folks can, you know, absorb that type of donation to the organization, we would certainly appreciate them considering it. And that program is continuing to be fleshed out, by the way. We're looking at hopefully having, you know, we were exploring some neat things to do this year in Dallas with our Warriors Club members, some additional recognition, things of that nature, maybe some special events, all that still being fleshed out. So we're going to look forward to trying to do some fun stuff like that at our next national convention. But for more information on the Warriors Club, the toll free number that folks can call is 833-829-7066, or they can email Warriors Club at DAV.org. And one of our folks will, you know, get back with them and get them squared away. And, you know, not that, you know, this makes a huge difference for the membership card is pretty sweet. It is, I have seen one. But Doug, you know, I really appreciate your time. I really hope our viewers today got something out of this. Is Doug always nice to say, you know, membership is a lifeboat at DAV? And Doug, anything in closing remarks here before I let you go? Just real quick, I'm so appreciative of the effort of all of our members and what they do every single day. I want to make sure that they understand that they can reach out to me, dwells at DAV.org. My direct line is 859-442-2060. Of course, they're always welcome to call the membership department or email the membership department. But certainly I am here for them. And if they need anything all the way from our department leadership on down to the individual member, I'm here for them. We will get back to them ASAP. And if I can answer the question for them, I'm going to get them to somebody that can. All right. You can take the man in his word. I see them in action. But Doug, thank you very much. To those watching, thank you. Stay safe. And please check out DAV.org. You can find just about anything or link to it that we discussed here today right there. And Doug, thank you very much.