The membership campaign slogan, Shape The Future with AAUW is off to a great start! The reason, every branch in the state can benefit by using the new campaign brochure to recruit new members. New members can save money and branches can earn up to three free memberships! Now that is exciting!!

Have you ever wondered what happens when branches just do not seem to be growing, programs become mundane and repetitious? Do branches decide to disband, leave the wonderful organization to which we are affiliated and simply forget all that AAUW has to offer? Yes, in fact, some branches do leave the organization. But more importantly, some branches have members determined to make things work, through hard work and help from others. This is exactly why this article will feature the Tallahassee Branch. This three-part article will show membership, programming, planning, and evaluation all intertwined to make a branch work and grow.

Part One -
Tallahassee Branch...what happened, what is happening, and what will lie ahead.

Every May the Tallahassee Branch Board holds a meeting to plan the programs for the next year before taking time off for the summer. This past May there was a consensus that we were not satisfied with our branch and our programs. We wanted a more exciting branch, wanted to get away from the stand-and-deliver mode, and wanted to get away from the idea of the obligatory monthly meeting in which only a handful of our members attended.

We knew what we didn't want. We were tired of responding to patch-up fixes of the same issues. So we committed ourselves to meeting over the summer to redefine ourselves. Emily Millet led us in a Display Thinking Activity that collected our desires for our future. These discussions have been exciting and energy releasing, while sometimes anxiety- producing since we squelched the natural rush to nail down specific activities. We focused not on what we were going to do, but on why we were together, having faith that the nuts-and-bolts details would eventually emerge. The result was a commitment to work for structural societal change with measurable results evident within three years.

We have adopted the national slogan, "Shape the Future" as our slogan for our new way of working. Every activity that we do is to be scrutinized as to its fit with our overall commitment. We acknowledged that we do not have the answers as to how to get where we are heading. We know that we will make mistakes and that not every idea we try will work. We will travel down blind alleys. Mid-year we will reevaluate our course and make adjustments. Technology, defined broadly, is the vehicle we will be using. Technology is more than hardware, software, and the Internet. A pencil is technology and one of the most powerful tools is our brain.

Almost all of our activities will be done with coalition partners. Our events are still emerging, but already a Technology Interest Group (appropriately communicating via e-mail) has formed. We are planning a "LearnFair" encompassing learning styles, gender differences, etc. We are planning a forum on how the upcoming elections may affect the future of the judiciary.

Does your branch have a membership story to tell? Send that story to the State Membership Director. Your story may be just what another branch needs to hear to motivate them this year as they "Shape The Future with AAUW."

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