The whole aim of LCG is membership gain, and whilst new clubs are important, it is very important not to overlook those clubs that are presently struggling. Leo Club Growth has three distinct areas, and these must be all covered in order that it succeeds.

The First area is retention, which we will begin on next week. This area is concerned with the keeping of existing members and clubs. It is important that this is delt with first as if an exisiting club has problems, just gaining new members will not solve this problem. I liken it to a sink. If the sink is not plugged - putting more water in the sink will not solve the problem. In this area we look at the whole concept of a club meeting, and how the President's responsibilities also cover the welfare of exisitng members. We look at how to put spark into a dying club, how to give the club motivation, and how many of their problems are cuased by lack of communication. This will be the largest and most detailed section and will take a long time to cover, however, it is vital to Leo Clubs.

The second area is publicity. It is imprtant that clubs maintain a high profile in their local communities. This is mainly done through local newspapers, although this idea canalso apply to national publicity for a District/Multiple District as a whole. Without publicity, the public do not know what Leos is about, and hence the job of recruitment is a lot harder.

The final area is recruitment. This could be recruitment in the sense of increasing membership in an exisitng club, or in the sense of setting up a new Leo Club. This section is mainly a bringing together of the ideas from the previous areas, and will be comparatively very short.

I expect the information will take a good many months to be completely distributed - as there is a lot to discuss. Again, as with anything in The Leo, readers are always invited to send in their responses and views. Afterall, 100 peoples opinions are always better than just 1 person's.