UJGS Success! – March 2012

Last night was our first UJGS meeting of the year. We had a bad end to last year, with no one showing up to the meeting. One person emailed to let me know she didn’t like to drive on the ice. Another had to work. I heard no other excuses. I was disappointed to say the least.

I started to devise ways to change UJGS and make it grow. I want to get the members more involved. I want more members. We have an international conference coming up in Utah in two years and I want a good group of volunteers from here. And I want more people in the seats.

My three person board met once, but we didn’t manage a second meeting yet. We discussed things, and I think I made it clear to them that I wanted them to do more. For two years, I did almost everything, save for the treasurer’s job and some of the secretary’s job. It was time for others to take up some of the slack. If I kept it up alone, I would burn out fast.

I wanted to expand to webinars. One board member thought it would be too complicated, but I easily convinced him after he suggested I start a virtual society. “Do you think I’ll run both?” Then he said to try it. Our test run at the FHL went badly, but our second test run, during this meeting, went well.

One of my problems is getting the members more involved. I would ask for volunteers and no one would stand up. I would get stuck asking for volunteers for one or two things, when there were so many other things we could do that maybe they’d volunteer for instead. I’m going to try to make every volunteer opportunity available and hope that some of those positions are claimed. Maybe we won’t get a volunteer for years for some things, but hopefully other things will happen.

I was optimistic before our December meeting and it went badly. I think I was neutral for March and it went well. In one case, I asked what the members thought, having already decided we should do something, and they agreed. They actually agreed to to some volunteering.

Did I also mention we got three new members? Our new youngest member is 11 years old; he and his mother joined. Our other new member has been wanting to join but kept missing meetings. I was introduced to her via my mother and the wife of the rabbi I grew up with. She and the rabbi’s wife are cousins. I called her, and invited her to the meeting.

And so begins another year of UJGS. I have some more programming to do on the web site. I made some modifications to the design of the site, added a few bits, and started the blog. I finished everything but the members only section. But I may have our first members only webinar — some of yesterday’s presentation on the 1940 US Census.

The URL of this blog post is http://idogenealogy.com/blog/2012/03/21/ujgs-success-march-2012/.

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