Re-enrolment: there’s gold in them thar lists

There are lists of prime prospects for membership in Ontario’s Eagles Clubs, nearly eight times our total annual membership quotas for the year.

They’re the lists of former members who have already been members in recent years, who we let drift away and who were dropped from our rosters for failure to pay dues.

For the most part we’ve done very little to ask them to come back. Toronto 2311 has contact information for 209 of these people. London 4060 has 139, Sault Ste Marie has 92, Heyden-Goulais River has 68 and Webbwood 4269 has 54. In all cases, these 562 people represent numbers equal to or even greater than our entire active membership lists.

Some, of course, have passed away, are too infirm to participate any longer or have moved away. There may be some we don’t want to see again and others who, for whatever reason, don’t want to see us again.

It’s the job of the Membership Security Committee (FOE Statutes Section 100.2) to encourage the rest of these people to come back. All it takes is a $10 re-enrolment fee, their annual dues and an aerie ballot. They don’t have to be initiated again. Problem is, not one of our Local Aeries has a membership security committee.

Here are 10 tips to help you get started.

1. Ask your Aerie President to form a Membership Security Committee of at least three people to send letters and emails and who would be good on the phone – nothing beats the personal contact of telephone calls.

2. The Membership Security Committee has two jobs – to encourage members about to become delinquent to renew on time (renewal) and to encourage inactive former members to come back (re-enrollment). Campaigns should be done separately, so that re-enrollment activities don’t interfere with the more time-sensitive renewal activities.

3. Take the time to plan what you’ll say in letters and emails or on the phone, and make sure you get a postage budget.

4. Post the names of people you’re approaching to renew or re-enroll in a prominent place so your Brothers and Sisters in the Aerie who know them can help out as well.

5. For re-enrollments, cull the lists first – cross out who would be unable or unlikely to return or whose contact information is unknown. You may have to pare the list down by as much as half what you started with, but that’s still a pretty hefty group of prospects.

6. Before you cross out someone with a bad address, check the name on the website Canada 411  (www.canada411.ca) . You may be able to locate quite a few of them that way.

7. For both renewals and re-enrollments, consider contacting their original proposers (if they’re still active members) and ask the proposers to contact them as well. That personal touch could make all the difference.

8. Make sure you keep members well informed of your progress at general meetings. Ask them to make a special effort to make returning members feel welcome and appreciated. If that wasn’t done when they were here last, it could well be why they left.

9. Also for re-enrollments, build a mailing/calling campaign around a big upcoming social event. It gives you a reason why you’re calling or writing now.

10. The Aerie, if it chooses to, can provide a financial incentive for a calling campaign – free admission to a special event, for example, or $5 off the re-enrollment fee. When you have a campaign proposal ready to go, pitch the discount idea at an Aerie general meeting.