 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the communication seminar. We're going to get through it. I'm going to try and leave room for questions. I've got a whole bunch of stuff to run by you, so we're going to move as quick as we can. If you can, we'll try and reserve some time towards the end for questions. So if you can, make your way to your seats. I want to thank you all for being here. It's been a great year for DAV. I think we had a record amount of PSA placements last year. I'm happy that that's affecting you and helping you with your jobs. Before we get started, and I only have a couple of them here, but I want to introduce you to some of my team members who are here. Todd Hunter back here. When you see those videos with the stick people, that's a Todd Hunter construct. Give him a warm round of applause. Doreen Brionis over here. Doreen's the production manager at DAV. If you want help, yeah, Doreen gets a, she's a known quantity, isn't she? So if you need help with the logo with, if you want help with the design that you're working on or a review or logo compliance, anything like that, Doreen's the person to help you. Up front, I have Mary Dever, who works at our National Service Legislative Headquarters. Mary does a great job for us covering, I mean, some of the biggest legislative topics, your updates, the things that you get there. And she comes with a great background from the United States Air Force. Todd's Marine and Janice Hagar, a new staff member, Hagar. I screwed up her last name. Now she's going to make me push. Janice is a retired Marine Master Sergeant who just joined the team recently, recently appointed. Janice ran the, she ran the MCRD Public Affairs Office when she retired while she was a deputy and then she stayed on with the Marine Corps as a civilian after she retired. She has a wealth of experience. She did deal with recruits a lot so be careful when you get too close, you know. One of the things that I want to talk about just to kick off is communications. At the end of the day, people think, well, there's all these different elements or these different aspects of communications. And ultimately it can be just as simple as talking to people and making sure that the word gets across to one another, right? Ultimately, that's what we're trying to do. It's pretty simple. When it comes to military, when it comes to combat, if you want to defeat your enemy, how great is it if you can go ahead and cut off their lines of communication? Pretty great, right? Well, if you can keep strong lines of communications, it has the positive effect. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure that the information gets across, that everyone's aware of the resources that are available to them and that they're using them. If we're not, if we come here and we sit through this seminar and we take some notes and those notes later end up as a coaster for a can of whatever frosty beverage you want, we're not doing much good. So we have to take the information that we get here and bring it back to our chapters and make sure they know what's available to them so that they're using it so that they can succeed like the rest of us. We always accomplish more together than we can apart and you know that's a credible statement because someone smart said it one time. But, you know, we look at it and even when you look at foreign militaries today you find out that people realize that being in a formation together and doing stuff as a team is more effective. We're better when we're on the same page. We do have new public service announcements. I know some of you have seen them. How many of you have seen them on TV? That's great. I hope the rest of you just don't watch TV that much because they've been on a lot. We've been airing them all over the place. Barry shared one of ours. Our chief financial officer and headquarters executive director yesterday were extremely proud of these messages. We have some great people who are authentic. They have great connections with DAV who are part of that including past national commanders Bobby Barrera, Armando Albarón, or either one of those guys here. I was hoping I might get one of them. Well, they're famous so when you see them you'll recognize them. There's Bobby Barrera. There you go. One of my favorite veterans of all times. We have some others. Carmen McGuinness, who knows Carmen? Carmen's the best. There she is! Carmen's in the back. Carmen's part of our public service announcement campaign. A couple other veterans who are involved. We're doing a lot more with invisible injuries. Some of that comes from feedback from you saying that a lot of veterans have a little bit of a difficult time when they don't have a visible injury, when they see other people with visible injuries. So we want to show the full scope of what's going on and show some diversity. But I do want, since Barry showed the one with Bobby, yesterday I want to show Armandos. Real quick, the one with Armando and someone else who's famous in this room. I'm a veteran. My victory was admitting I had PTSD and getting help. As America's veterans face challenges, DAV is there. I no longer see it as a weakness, but as a sign of strength. I call it post-traumatic growth. DAV provides a lifetime of support helping veterans of every generation get the benefits they've earned. I am a veteran. I lost both lakes in Vietnam. Every year, DAV helps more than a million veterans so they can reach victories great and small. My victory was getting my benefits and a good education. I'm a veteran. I felt like Nora was safe. My victory was finding the help I needed. But there's more to be done and more victories to be won. Thanks to DAV. Now I feel like I'm human again. Help support more victories for veterans. Go to DAV.org. That's great. How many of you have seen a DAV billboard in your communities? That's great. And maybe you're wondering, that's worth a round of applause. Maybe you're one... Maybe you're wondering how many placements we've had. We've had nearly 5,000 billboards placed last year alone. And some of those are in great big cities. Some of them are on very well-traveled highways. Some of them are on some byways that maybe don't get as much traffic. But our message is resonating extremely well with folks who run into it, especially the folks who control those billboards. And I'll talk a little bit more about how you can maybe get some more billboards and stuff like that in your areas. But one of the big things that we were able to do last year at Veterans Day, just right after the Veterans Day Parade was letting out, we were near Broadway on Times Square handing out, doing an activation where we were able to get the word out on DAV. And before that, we just stopped in and this wasn't entirely planned. It was, well, it was planned on our part, but not on theirs. But we went ahead and thought, well, what if we could get on the Today Show this morning? It's Donald Day in here. It should be called the Donald Day Show now. But here's what that experience was like just for you folks who weren't there to see it. And we're back on this Saturday morning, November 11th, 2017, on this Veterans Day. And we have an incredible group of military men and women who are on the plaza. You've seen some of them. We thank them. And of course, we thank all of the other veterans out there for their service to our country. We're at the Today Show Plaza just trying to make people aware of the stuff that DAV does for veterans. So we've got a bunch of veterans out here and we're having a good time. We've got lots of veterans on the plaza. Happy Veterans Day! Day of Veterans! We're taking over Times Square. We've got teams of veterans on the street giving out t-shirts. We're thanking veterans for their service. Whatever comes in the heart. Sending thank you notes to veterans at VA hospitals and letting people know that DAVs are supporting our veterans every day. And we've got billboards all over the city. Biggest forums. Thank you so much. It's one of the biggest forums, you know, for out-of-home, we call it out-of-home. Anything billboard related, bus stations, things like that. A huge forum. We've been incredibly successful. And when you're involved in something like that, whether it's media relations, it goes back to that old quote, right? You can be a force multiplier, as the PowerPoint ranger might say. But it's real. And the one thing about it is, if you're doing it right, it can go extremely well for you. And you can do great things for DAV. And if you're doing it wrong, it might not go quite as smoothly. One thing about all of this is that you have a special level of credibility because you're in the community doing the work. And I've said this probably to many of you before. I want, I'm making sure, believe me, that every billboard company, every television radio station in your communities has access through multiple means to get our PSAs. But when it comes to getting them aired, getting something from a national headquarters type entity is one thing. Getting them from people who are in the community, who are operating transportation networks, who are serving veterans, making sure that people aren't left behind. That's a big deal. PSA ambassadors, we have a toolkit out there on that. Someone just asked me today. They said, well, my gosh, we cannot, I can't drive without running into a DAV billboard, which is fantastic up in Wisconsin. Larry said that. But if you want, his point was, do we thank them? And we do thank them. But if you want to thank them too, we do do that. If you want to go and talk to them, I'm willing to help you do that. There's a public service advertising toolkit. We're going to have a sign-up sheet up here when we close out. So if you want to get involved, you can do it. But whether you're talking about media relations or you're talking about public service announcements, authenticity is important. What is one of the biggest crimes in the veterans community for someone to do personally? It's stolen valor, right? So, but fortunately for us, we're doing it. We're credible. We're the real deal. We're out doing the work, making things happen. But you can tell when the authenticity isn't quite there, right? Your eyes. And I'm not going to do it because I shouldn't do this, right, Grandmaster? No. Okay, Grandmaster Bruce Silva here. There's a big demonstration that's coming up next week, Saturday, but for now we have a sneak peek. So we're going to start right over here. Is that right? Yes. Okay. 21.2 pounds. That's the brick right there. Right. Okay. And why the glass? The big slide with that glass without breaking the glass. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right, let's go. That's incredible. Wait, to be honest, I actually felt these bricks. These are real bricks. I mean, there's no... Oh! Oh! Being authentic is pretty important. You can go to davpsa.org if you want to get involved. That's something you can tell a station manager right away. One of the great things about this too is beyond just making contact with the station manager and trying to get them to run our PSAs, you can start a relationship with the media that way too, where you're talking to them and you're more likely to get in front. I see some heads nodding because more and more people are doing it and that's great. With everything we do, there's a digital component. Some people, I think we're saying yesterday in Brian Let's seminar that... that what are we doing to reach the younger folks and what are we doing? We do not... Our goal is to get as much donated media as we can. But beyond that, we're targeting specifically transitioning service members. We're trying to make it easier, kind of loosen in the jar a little bit so that when you run into them, first off, they know you. They know what DAV does. But also, we want to make it so that they're already getting targeted. They're more likely to do the stuff that we want them to do, which is the stuff that everyone wants, getting their benefits, making sure that they're connected with employment, all that stuff. So we're targeting them pretty tight. One of the new partnerships that we started this year was with a company called We Are the Mighty, or anyone in here familiar with them. They target mostly younger service members, but they were able to look at DAV's mission and kind of give us a perspective, an outsider's perspective on what we do. Transitioning out of the military can be kind of a rough road. Not at all like transitioning in. Sure, basic is no picnic, but it's not exactly complicated either. There's always that motivational specialist there to point you in the right direction. But transitioning back out, that can be a little overwhelming. Who can you turn to for guidance and occasional motivation to get you through those obstacles that stand between you and a smooth, happy civilian life? Let DAV be your life instructor. That's what they're all about. Transition assistance is an art that DAV has been perfecting for almost 100 years. They are committed to keeping the promise that was made to all veterans that your sacrifice would be met with gratitude and support. Here are five ways that DAV will clear your path out of the military. Number five, get a jump on your transition. If you'd like to be the first out of the gate, DAV staffs transition service officers at nearly 100 military installations throughout the nation to provide benefits counseling and assistance to service members prior to separation. Number four, kickstart your claim. DAV assists veterans with more than 250,000 benefit claims annually. In 2017, DAV helped secure more than $4 billion of new and retroactive benefits to care for veterans and their families. DAV employs over 260 national service officers who are ready to review your medical records, help you establish your disability rating, set up healthcare benefits, and connect with services that support your civilian life. Number three, boost your job search. DAV recognizes the value that service members bring to the workforce. They are the most prolific charity in the nation in terms of connecting veterans with employers, and they're committed to providing you with the tools, resources, and opportunities you need to competitively enter the job market. Number two, speed the healing process. Whether it's your mental health or treating a physical injury, DAV is committed to helping you receive the best care possible. The DAV transportation network mobilizes thousands of volunteer drivers to shuttle veterans to and from medical appointments all free of charge. Number one, amplify your voice. DAV works on Capitol Hill as a highly motivated, knowledgeable, and respected advocate for veterans. When DAV speaks, policymakers listen. Bringing your specific challenges to the attention of DAV helps deepen the national conversation about veterans' issues and helps them improve the quality of support. Transitioning out of the military can be challenging, but with DAV, no veteran has to go it alone. What do you think? It's kind of nice getting an outside perspective on what we do. And the one thing about this when I was talking about that forced multiplier idea, right, is that besides throwing a hand grenade in your foxhole, you can share this stuff. This stuff's out there for us to share. And here's another one that just came out on Friday. I think it was Friday. The day's kind of, it's kind of Groundhog's Day for us when convention rolls around. But here's one that came out on Dave Riley that's just kind of a general outreach piece, but I hope you like it. Dave's so much, such an inspiration to all of us. I get Dave to play here. Now if you'll check out my desktop real quick. A reminder, DAV communications seminars coming right up. Here we go. When I got sick, it was my first vacation in quite a while. We packed up the RV. As soon as I opened the door, I felt like I was going to die. New macoccal bacteria was in my bloodstream and it was turning me septic. I went into this immune response. Basically all the blood went to my heart and brain and cut it off to all my extremities. When I came out of the coma, my limbs had already been amputated. My wife had to make all those decisions. She's been in my rock through the years and I always love her for that. We just wanted him to survive. We didn't even think about what tomorrow was going to be like. You just handle everything one day at a time. I've served about 17 years total. I was in the first class of Swimmers for the Coast Guard. There was not a lot of procedures out there for the different rescue operations so I helped develop some of those in San Francisco. Coming out of the coma, everything had to be done for me. It really wasn't who I was. I was worried about how we were going to get along until DAV came to my bedside. DAV stands for Disabled American Veterans. A mission is to ensure veterans live lives with respect and dignity. The service officer really eased a lot of my fears and brought me to the realization that I could do whatever I want to do. I decided to dedicate my life to helping vets. I got involved with DAV and then started moving up in the chapter's ranks. I became state commander of the NAACP. I'm sure no one's noticing what's going on up here. Where were we? I don't know any. You say you couldn't find the switch to turn the computer on. That does make me feel a little bit better right now. When I got sick, it was my first vacation in quite a while. We packed up the RV. As soon as I opened the door, I felt like I was going to die. New Macaco bacteria was in my bloodstream. And it was turning me septic. I went into this immune response. Basically, all the blood went to my heart and brain. I cut it off to all my extremities. When I came out of the coma, my limbs had already been amputated. My wife had to make all those decisions. She's been my rock through the years. And I always love her for that. We just wanted him to survive. We didn't even think about what tomorrow was going to be like. You just handle everything one day at a time. I've served about 17 years total. I was in the first class of swimmers for the Coast Guard. There was not a lot of procedures out there for the different rescue operations. So I helped develop some of those in San Francisco. Coming out of the coma, everything had to be done for me. It really wasn't who I was. I was worried about how we were going to get along until DAV came to my bedside. DAV stands for Disabled American Veterans. A mission is to ensure veterans live lives with respect and dignity. The service officer really eased a lot of my fears and brought me to the realization that I could do whatever I wanted to do. I decided to dedicate my life to helping vets. I got involved with DAV and then started moving up in the chapter's ranks. I became state commander and then the national commander. So it was a progression of volunteerism. Just all these different little experiences, all of them from eating breakfast with the president at the White House to being in Congress and testifying on behalf of veterans. To all of this, he always found something to be passionate about. Well, I was a woodworker while I was still in the Coast Guard. Right after I came out of the hospital, I didn't see me being able to do any of that anymore. Slowly, I started getting out in my shop again and saw that I could adapt the gear and make it work. You can never say no to DAV, no matter how impossible you think it is. He doesn't. That's what I try to do for other people. Show them that if I can do it, they can do it. What are we working on? Hey, what's up, buddy? As I run across disabled veterans, I invited them to my shop. We talk about what their individual experience is. It's about veterans helping veterans. He actually encourages me and helps me to keep a good attitude going through life and I do whatever I can to help him. We were looking for some kind of project to do. I started looking at all the people that have helped me, wanting to thank them. So, I thought, well, everybody's has a desk. Let's make a little desk box. So, we made a bunch of boxes and gave them away. They're all stamped, hooked made by Dave Riley. It's just a way for me to show a little pride in what I've done. Being able to work with the vets and show them that I know what they go through and there is a path ahead, that's very rewarding to me. I enjoy the fellowship, camaraderie. I've learned the value of friendship. I truly understand how important it is to have somebody to have your back. What I've found is the greatest motivator just providing people with hope. It allows me to have a sense of purpose in my life, give back to the people who served. I think there's no greater calling. Dave's pretty great and that was only three-quarters of it. Media partnership. How many of you noticed DAV on who wants to be a millionaire the week of Veterans Day last year? Pretty great. It's happening again but I haven't had a chance really to show you guys what that looked like especially for you didn't see it but that'll happen again this year. So obviously you served in the Army but you have a special connection to our sponsor DAV, right? Absolutely. Part of war I suffered some injuries including a traumatic brain injury after getting home and being medically discharged I reached out to my local DAV chapter and very quickly those men and women became my brothers and sisters. They really supported me in a lot of different ways I didn't even know was out there when my friends and family maybe really didn't know what was going on with me as a young man and so they changed my life and saved my life in a lot of ways and I'm really excited to be here for them and to be working for getting them some more money. That's great. This is near and dear to your heart. What do you think? The Department of New Jersey member there another place where you'll see our PSAs are on Major League Baseball and NFL a lot of the NFL teams are doing this and I made this joke maybe before for you but if you wonder who are the 18 Major League Baseball teams and who are the 15 NFL teams who are covering DAV PSAs you'll know because it's the good ones. Well, hey, they got enough problems with that anthem stuff. With the right tools, right? If you have the right resources there's some pretty incredible things you can do. But one of the things you've been asking us for is everyone wants a you want a presentation, right? You want something that you can take out so you can be a better ambassador for DAV on a lot of different levels. And one of the things that we made available and sent out early this year that you've been waiting for for a while is an identity video and I want to share that with you real quick. A promise was made to America's veterans a promise that their sacrifice would be met with gratitude and support that their needs would be met with care that their families would not be left behind. DAV is keeping the promise to hundreds of thousands of veterans of all generations. We help them receive the health, disability and financial benefits they've earned so they can live the full, rewarding lives they deserve. DAV understands the needs of veterans because we're veterans too. We've supported our nation's heroes for nearly 100 years. Our services are free and our commitment is total. DAV has more than 1 million members and nearly 1,300 local chapters. Every year at hundreds of national service offices all across the country and with a fleet of mobile service offices reaching underserved areas DAV professionals work with more than 200,000 veterans helping them cut through red tape to file more than 300,000 claims for VA benefits. DAV advocates help each veteran understand his or her benefits and will remain by their side through every step of the claims process. Each year we help veterans and their families receive several billion dollars in earned benefits. We also place DAV advisors on military installations all over the country to help service members transition to civilian life. I was referred by a colleague. I'm glad you're here and I'm here to assist you. The most critical benefit promised to veterans changed in service is health care. But many veterans don't receive the care they need because they can't get themselves to a VA medical facility. The DAV transportation network brings thousands of volunteer drivers to the rescue. They log millions of miles each year giving veterans around 700,000 rides to and from medical appointments all at no charge. Nothing is more important to the dignity of veterans who can work than finding a job. But getting a job can be difficult. So DAV is working to help transitioning military members, veterans and their spouses find meaningful employment through our in-person and virtual job fairs. DAV is the most prolific charity in the nation in terms of connecting veterans with employers. Just as veterans fought for our way of life, DAV fights for theirs in Washington. We are a tireless and respected advocate for the rights of all veterans. Now, we're leading the way to improve the lives of women veterans with our powerful voice on Capitol Hill. When DAV speaks, policymakers listen and veterans' lives get better. DAV also keeps its promise to the millions of concerned citizens who donate their financial support to our mission. Each year, we put their generous gifts to work serving more than one million veterans in life-changing ways, just as we have for nearly 100 years. Our record of service to veterans is unmatched. We do whatever it takes to serve all of America's veterans because they did whatever it took to serve all of us. A promise was made and DAV makes sure that promise is kept. Great. And that was the voice of Ashley Burns, who isn't here. She just had her new baby, James Mattis Burns. You won't guess, but she's a Marine. But Ashley's not here. She's been great. It's been great having her at Barry's presentation yesterday, too. We developed this as part of an effort to try and give you something that you can take out and use to promote DAV. You can download on the website. It's hard sometimes getting up in front of a group of people. We know that, right? It's not always easy to go out there because you're a little worried. You're kind of putting yourself out there, which is something military people aren't always real comfortable with. No one wants that to happen, but if it's going to, they might as well be Russians, right? The publicity guides out. It's been available for some time, but you can go there and download that. You can check it out. There's a lot of stuff on there. And we're just joined. Steve came in just a little bit late. But Dr. Steve Wilson here will help you with those things. One of the things that we say frequently, if you have a good news story, we want to help you get it out, whatever it is. If you have a bad news story, you definitely need our help. So definitely call us if something, if you see a crisis looming, whether it's financial, transportation network, anything like that, our reputation is very important for us. No one wants to be, you know, part of the bad news story, but if it's going to happen, you might as well get ahead of it a little bit and we'll help you do that if we can. There's a lot of other tools online that are available to you. You got to go on there and use them, though. I mean, a lot of people call and ask us for speeches and we're happy to provide them, but I think that you'd be probably better served if you knew, if you were to look through the speeches we already have and pull some stuff, maybe we can help you a little bit more based on the circumstance that you're in. But we want to help. We got the language guide and style book. The brand style book's really helpful. It helps you get the logo right. It's something that you can hand to a vendor if you're working on a billboard or something like that. And you can get the word out. One thing that's very important to us and that we hear a lot is, no one wants to, we don't want to leave someone behind and there are veterans of very, very different levels of information technology abilities, right? There's some people who aren't on the computer. They don't know how to turn the computer on or whatever someone said. And we recognize that we need to stay together, but the Department of Virginia had something that was helpful for that, but no one wants to fall off the bus, right? I love how the guy is just on his cell phone in the front and he never really changes. There's a burning pile of trash there on the back of the truck to join him. Their safety officer was very proud. Where I was going with that was electronic newsletters, of course. A lot of the departments and chapters who are using electronic newsletters are having tremendous success engaging people, bringing more people on to be volunteers, getting the word out about what DAV is doing. And you came to us and you said, it sure would be helpful if you could give us some resources on that. So we came back to Department of Virginia and several other, there was a couple other departments and said, how are you guys doing this? Tell us how so that we can spread the word. And that's what we did. One of the things that's very important for us is that we're supporting all of DAV's functions. And lately where we've seen a lot of success and Steve's going to talk about this a lot more in his presentation about outreach is in helping recruit drivers. You can use the electronic newsletter for that. How many of you would agree with us? It's really hard. Add to that the fact that you might not have people getting in or you need a larger pool because some of the people don't make it through and we recognize that's a challenge. And I'm just wondering how many of you could identify with this when it comes to the process of bringing in volunteer drivers. So we came up with the volunteer driver's guide. Janice is working a lot more with supporting our voluntary services department in general. And we're going to work on testing and seeing what it's like if the national organization helps you when you come to pick up vans. If we help you with media relations so that before those vans get home not only can you promote what DAV is doing but hopefully bring in some drivers. And if you're just down on drivers and you're not getting a van there's a template press release in this tool that you can use. I believe it's in the members only section of the website. If you want that link emailed to you you can fill out a form when we break up here. But another thing that didn't quite make it yesterday we had a technical difficulty but we're trying to promote this. Austin Schaffner who's not here we're working on the women veterans report while we're here so he's doing some interviews right now but he created this and I thought it was kind of a neat way to emphasize the value of the transportation network. I'm a volunteer driver for DAV and we bring veterans to their appointments at VA hospitals. I really enjoy driving you never know who you're going to get and today we're picking up someone with a very special story. Oh still lazy, he'll be in good shape. All right. Vince, you're 94 years old. What's your claim to fame around this area? Oh, I'm getting up there about one of the oldest around this general area. I see in the paper where some people some veterans even are living up to 107 years old and I hope I can outdo them on that one. So what happened when you were captured? You were in Italy? Yeah, I was in Italy up in the mountains. So with them Germans they just started shooting right down the rocks and then sparks were flying all over the place and all of a sudden oh, darn it, that rock really hit me hard. I looked down my foot and I seen the blood it was not about a shoe. The dentist, I believe I got him. He took a bullet here just now. When he'd come in, one German come down the hill and he had a little burp gun I called just a little rifle and he pointed that right to my head and he could speak a little English. He said, for you the war is finished. At that point when we left there, they took us to the hospital so here I was about six, eight weeks with a damn cast on all my hip. Then they assigned another one of the prisoners that was in the hospital with me to help me go to the bathroom. And he didn't appreciate that assignment at all. I'm sure neither of you ever expected to have to get help to the bathroom, right? Yeah, I'll tell you, I didn't like it either. I kind of prepared my privacy. And then we had potato soup and I called it a maggot soup. They asked me one time after I had the service that did you eat the maggots and all? I said, well, it just depends on how damn hungry I was. That's right. The starvation of maggot soup and I said, I guarantee you lose weight. Vince, what does it mean to you when other people volunteer their time to help veterans? Oh, I just think they're just wonderful. But not everybody is that thoughtful about the veterans but the ones that are. I really appreciate it. Well, and I feel honored to be able to do this for you and maybe someone someday will be doing it for me. Yeah, we hope so. Okay, Vince, here we are. It was nice to meet you. Thank you for your service. Alrighty. Okay, take care. Better what you're doing for all the veterans, not only myself. Well, I'm glad to be able to do it. Okay. What do you think? Yeah. Many of us have had those types of experiences, right? You meet someone you just don't know what they've been through and then when you find out sometimes it's just all inspiring. We're using things like this and you can use stuff like this too. It's all available to you. You can take that video. You can share it on Facebook. Whatever you want to do that's going to help you move the ball forward, get the word out and recruit more drivers. But I'm sitting up here talking to you like you don't know anything about this when DAV chapters right now are doing more in terms of engaging the media than they have in ever. I mean, it's incredible how often we see successful media stories. And I just want to share some of the outreach stuff that your folks are doing that's impressive. And these are just things that we've pulled up, you know, since before we left around the 4th of July is kind of where we clicked there. Here's one, Taunton Mass, July 4th. You have a Veterans Day ceremony. Ring the bell fundraiser for DAV. Because it was a kind of creative fundraiser it made the news and it was probably, they were probably shocked at how easy it was to get someone out there who wanted to cover that. Davenport, Iowa, giving back to DAV. Winona Post, Winona, Minnesota, that city was named after Winona Rider I heard. They have a non-profit that's taken over to fund a Vets fan. That's a DAV transportation network story that made it. Here's Eastgate, Ohio, a DAV chapter donating 600 bucks to Camp Corral. That's pretty cheap if you consider the advertising value of the story in the first place. Greenfield, Indiana, Veterans Group, gets wheels in motion for funding new VA transportation van. So if you're even trying to fundraise for the van, if you have a good cause, a good service that comes first, it works. Wildwood, New Jersey, New Jersey is one of the few states I know of who has a dedicated at the department level communications person and it's working out for them pretty well, I'd say. Broussard, Louisiana, DAV auxiliary, getting a shout out, the juniors program. What about scholarships? We're doing that outreach ourselves, but you could be doing stories that just promote the fact that there is a scholarship program and bring your volunteer network, or your volunteer hours up. Here's one where someone in Iowa City said, we sure we're low on drivers. What happens if we reach out and ask the media for help? That's a newsworthy story because what happens if there aren't drivers? What happens if there's no one there to drive the vans? Well, there's going to be some veterans who aren't going to get to their appointments, right? So there's a need, it's pretty easy for the media when they see these things to pick them up. Free rides offered to veterans event. It's with the DAV transportation network as well. Going the extra mile, here's another story from Idaho. The Louis Town, Washington. I mean, we get this stuff all the time. It keeps going. This, I think, was impressive. The Department of Alabama is sticklers when it comes to, I mean, they're just extremely organized, and they got a story. They took their guidance for department conventions, and they got a story on their department convention. That's kind of hard to do. I mean, there's a lot of competition for news out there, but they just made the effort, and it paid off for them. Here we are, Lane Caster, fundraiser to help VA hospitals. That comes down to DAV when you get into the article. Here's just a story where there's kind of an Americanism program, and DAV came in to honor the SAS who are involved. I know Michigan has a really great program with essays as well that probably could get some real media coverage as well. Youngstown, Ohio spotlight. A chapter was doing a women veterans event and got a nice story out of that. And I mean, I'll keep going through Ohio again, Phoenix. This Phoenix story is actually a little bit of an anomaly because it wasn't the chapter that did the outreach, although the chapter helped with the outreach. We kind of looked as a national organization. We said, well, let's test this stuff. We're giving people guidance. Let's see if it actually works. We went into Phoenix. We did this in Michigan. We did one in Wisconsin. And we said, well, where we have a good transportation network and where we have a need, let's go out and ask for, let's go and see what we can do in terms of media outreach. This is something that you can do on your own, and this is something that we'll help you with if you want the help and want to make the effort. St. Joe, a van for veterans. I'm not as crazy about the wrap on that one, but it's good. It's good coverage for DAV. Iron Mountain. There's Michigan again. Killeen, Texas. What do we got? Drivers needed. And I mean, this wasn't a huge effort on their behalf. They put together something, asked the media to do something with it, and lo and behold, they got coverage. Chili Cookoff for the Transportation Network in Grand Island, Nebraska. Here's that Milwaukee, part of that Milwaukee coverage. It was huge. It was a big news story. We got a ton of volunteers out of that. Steve, do you remember how many volunteers we got out of Milwaukee? Wasn't it, is Larry here, do you remember Larry? 48. Can you imagine if someone just said, hey, here's 48 drivers if you can use them. How easy things might be. But it was great. They did a huge pictorial. They talked about the program. They were selling DAV for us. They were doing publicity for us. Here's one in Minneapolis. Today, Disabled American Veterans tells us more than 40 people have called now, asking to volunteer to drive veterans to the VA hospital. On Monday, we told you the service that provides free rides for veterans to get medical care was short on volunteers. So if you are still interested in volunteering, call the number. It's up on your screen right now. 651-291-1212. Wouldn't that be nice? If the media was just helping you right through it, they'll help you recruit. They have every reason to do it. You can use social networks too for all of your goals. If it's getting people to meetings, if it's getting people to help with fundraisers, stand-downs, anything like that, you can use your social networks. You could do a lot of good with Facebook that you could also be doing with electronic newsletters. And if you use the content across the board, like you'll see us, we're repurposing a lot of content. Whenever we can, we do. It's the DAV, we're a charity, so we run on a certain amount of funds, and that's what we'll do. You can do the same thing, though. The content that DAV is using, that you see from DAV's Facebook, from our social networking, you can repurpose that for yourselves. We have a huge Facebook audience, and Brian talked about this a little bit yesterday, but part of the issue with the Facebook audience is that Facebook is making it harder for us to reach our own people. And they're doing that because it turns out they have this whole profit motive, which I'm violently against. But they don't want to send someone from their platform where they're getting ad revenue, necessarily, to your website. So when you share links on social networking, it's getting harder and harder for us when we're sharing links as a national organization to get our people to see them, to extend that reach to the 1.5 million people who follow DAV. This is kind of how we feel about what some of those changes. Obviously, I'm a fan of Russian military fails. But you can do it. There's a way around it. There's a way that you can get more DAV news, and this is something that you can share with your members. If you go in, you can go into your settings, and basically, you're telling Facebook, I really value DAV, and that's kind of content that I want to see the most. So you go up there, you go into your newsfeed preferences, top stories. Once you hover over that, you'll get to top stories. You go from there into the prioritize tab. From there, you select DAV among the numerous other things you have. And then you got it. So you all can do that yourselves. And Brian Lett can help you with this stuff. Brian's phone number's right there, if you want to write that down. I don't know if Brian mentioned it yesterday, but if you want to set up a Facebook page, call Brian. If you have questions about some engagement that's being weird, call Brian. And there's some other folks on the team who are just as equipped to help you with that, and we'll be happy to introduce you to them if you're not getting to Brian right away. Steve Wilson, who I think we just lost, because he's been running out to cover different things for DAV. But Steve, like I said, if you have a good news story, that's great. If you have a bad news story, you definitely want to talk to Steve, give him a call. We're still kind of struggling. We're getting a little bit more. We see way more in the news media about DAV, about you folks getting stories than you're sending us, which is an anomaly I'm pretty happy about, but I like it's sometimes more valuable to have something in your local media, especially for your goals, than it is to have it in the national organization. But I do want people to reach out to us when you're doing something good that you think deserves some coverage and contact us through feedback at DAV.org. And you can contact us for anything through feedback at DAV.org. And you can call national headquarters, and you don't have to have anyone's phone number, and you can get ahold of one of us, who lives in this country, which is sometimes rare. The production department, production at DAV.org, if you email that, email you can get help with logos, with banners. It's not always easy to get our colors right, but they'll help you with that. I mentioned before I'm wearing a DAV department in Nebraska shirt right now. Thank you, Jamie. Yeah, there's our Huskers. We'll do better with Scott Frost, guys, I promise. But we want to help. We don't want to be logo police. I still see, though, some folks using the old DAV red, white, and blue. And I'd like us to get away from that. And if I find it, you know, we probably reach out and have a talk. It's not like we're trying to slap everyone's hands. But it's just like a bunch of Russian people smoking in formation. We're better together, right? So if we're all on the same page, our message gets across much more clearly. You're more aligned with the PSAs that people are seeing, and they're more likely to resonate with your department logo.