Starting a Club

bonsaial1

In the post about setting up a show, Nipper asked about starting a club. Rather than subject Matt to writing a whole article about this subject, I thought we could bantor about some of the things that you dislike about your club or go on about all the really great things about your club. This would give us some valuable information about how to improve the clubs in other areas.

I guess I get to go first. I belong to 4 clubs, but really only "meet" with 2 of them. The two active clubs that I go to are The Hanford Bonsai Society and The Fresno Bonsai Society. Both are sanctioned by Golden State Bonsai Federation. This is a powerfull governing body. They provide educational materials, insurance, guest speakers, and a great convention every year. For a club to really succeed it would need the help of a sanctioning body. Though, it would not be carved in stone.

The charter members of the orginizing committee are the folks that have to be the strongest. These folks have to be dedicated to bonsai. Sap must flow through their veins. It takes a core group of 12 to 15 of these type people to insure that the club will continue to function. Once these people are orginized it doesn't really matter how large the club grows. The core group must never diminish though or the future of the club is doomed. The core group of the Fresno club, in which there are about 12 has a combined service of over 350 years. Thats a lot of dedication. Why do you need this core group? It's simple. These people are the ones that come to every meeting. They are the ones that will allow them selves to be elected to leadership positions. Pretty hard to have a club when the President only shows up to 7 out of 12 meetings. These are the people that will always be on hand when the work detail is choosen, they will be the ones that will always be there for helping setting up the show.

Now the core group is in place and you need to start to recruiting members. This has to be done thru setting up shows in shopping centers, "society shows" ie: orchid society, cactus society, rose society. Getting your name in the paper under "Clubs or Organizations". This is usually a free service in most newspapers. Elect a recruitting committee, let them come up with ideas.

Now your club has grown to 50 members in one month.WOW good for you! You got to have functions to keep everyone happy. People expect some bang for their buck. You have 12 months per year. You need 12 functions. Pretty simple huh. I wpuld like to see a club 40% guest speakers, 40% local speakers, 20% club member participation or "fun meetings". Guest speakers are someone that the club solicits for a price to come to a club meeting to give a lecture or demonstration or workshop. These are usually provided thru the sanctioning body. There are many local talents throughout the 50 states that provide services to clubs at reasonable fees. The local speakers are the hot shots in your club. The guys with all the great trees and loads of talent. These guys can't wait to get up in front of a crowd and spill all they know. Lots of good info here. These guys are good at keeping the beginners happy. The fun meetings are the ones to get club business done. You know style about 150 junipers for the spring show for the club to sell, make profit , and bring in the guest speakers. Maybe a meeting just before a show on how to prepare trees for a show and how to prepare your pots from all the months of lime water.

Raffles are an important part of the meetings. All club members should be encouraged to donate bonsai related items or heck, sometimes homebaked cookies neatly wrapped on a plate. (I know I have grabbed these before). In Hanford our raffles generate around 150.00 a month. This part of the club should have a chairman.

A newsletter, this is very important. This should be a chairman position too. A great newsletter shoud have currant events, upcoming events and some articles too. Pictures are great too, but this depends on the person and tools they posess.

A show, this will have to be a seperate thread. Wait a minute, there allready is one provided by Matt.

Officers go without say, you need a President, Vice, Treasurer, and Secretary.
Well thats about it. I will let someone else interject some thoughts here. Best regards, Bonsaial

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A tree a day...thats all we ask.

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