Hi, I'm Lee Grainwood. Many of our country's veterans return home from war only to face a new struggle with devastating injuries. They did an MRI with contrast and found that there was such significant damage that I'd probably be let out of the military. We knew Bob was going to eventually have his amputation. That was a given. Even though I didn't really show it, it was very, very difficult. It's almost like he didn't feel man enough. That was hard. I felt I wouldn't be able to do anything knowing that I had to learn how to walk again. Just like Bob, many of our country's veterans come home ill or injured, but DAV, Disabled American Veterans, is here to help. DAV has helped us tremendously for Bob to be able to compete. That helps him have a sense of purpose. DAV gives veterans hope. I want my kids to see that it's not a matter of disability, it's a matter of mind. For almost 100 years, DAV has been fighting to keep our promises to all veterans each and every day, ensuring that our sons and daughters get the care and assistance they deserve. They always have somebody there for you, and that's what I love about DAV. They make you feel like you're part of a family. When you visit helpdav.org today to give just $19 a month, we'll send you this symbolic blanket as a thank you and a reminder of all that you do for our country's disabled veterans. There's no doubt these patriots sacrifice so much for you and I. Now, will you stand up for them? When you give 63 cents a day, you're giving veterans hope. Thank you for helping veterans and their families. Please call or go online to helpdav.org right now to help.


Are you taking it? Oh, we're taking it. Yeah, this is nice. If he needs it, let him have it. It might be a bass. Really? No, that's no bass. Not one... I've never seen a bass do that, but... It doesn't feel... It is a big bass. What? Now look at that thing! Look at that one! Not a monster, but fighter. Nice! Another giant. What a battler. That's sick.


Good afternoon everybody. Can everybody hear me okay. Welcome to this year's membership seminar. I'm so gratified to see nearly a packed house here. It looks like folks are still coming in. It warms my heart truly to see that membership in our fine organization is so important to so many others and I see that every single day that when I go to work my staff relay stories all the time of folks in our membership that call and are just grateful of the work that we're doing and the only thing that we can think about is how grateful we are for all the work that you all do every single day out in the field so I really really appreciate all of your efforts on a daily basis. So I want to take a quick moment or two to introduce a few folks. To my right I have my esteemed interim membership committee. They've been so incredibly value as they've worked on a number of projects with us over the past year and offered advice and counsel as we've moved throughout the membership year. So hold your applause until the end and then I'll let you tell them what you think. To my immediate right is Melissa Tank Hernandez of the great state of Missouri. To her right is Joey Leepard from Arkansas and Mr. Flores from California. The interim membership committee. I also want to take a moment to thank a couple other individuals that do a tremendous job in supporting membership and I'm going to embarrass them and make them stand but first of all my membership manager at National Headquarters Robin Higgins. Yes come on Robin you can stand up and let everybody see you. She keeps me out of trouble that's an awful big job too. Yeah you're not supposed to agree Robin. And then of course a business analyst a lot of you were in the portal seminar the other day she does a tremendous job business analyst at National Headquarters with our statistics and whatnot Heather Kohlmeyer. So we definitely have a lot to get into today that's new but I wanted to wrap up a couple of things for us this year. So of course we had another ever more successful March membership madness tournament this past spring and for those of you who might not be familiar what we do is try to incentivize online recruitment. All of the metrics tell us that the more folks we can get signed up online with credit cards the better we're going to do. There's a proclivity for folks just to become full life members right out of the gate when they use a credit card and they're exponentially more likely to convert from part life to full life membership if we can get them on those recurring installments because you know to use a military term it's fired and forget right. So if we don't have to send them the recurring quarterly statements and worry about them sending us a new check that's certainly helpful. So to try to encourage that online recruitment only online memberships count towards this tournament. So we recognize the department as a whole so we're appreciative of all the chapters you know supporting their departments effort. This year again we had Missouri as our winner. They did another great job. I mentioned this in our membership awards lunch in a few minutes ago but our national service officers in Missouri recruited over a thousand new members this year alone so if we want to give them a round of applause for that great effort. And the whole department as well. So we have a couple of different awards that we offer for March membership madness. Of course there's the department champion the department that makes it from bracket to bracket to bracket and wins the championship game. And if you have an off couple of few days during the tournament I don't want you to stop recruiting you can still be the department MVP if you have the most overall new memberships. So you know keep keep recruiting even if you get knocked out on the brackets. We also recognize our top two individual recruiters you know with iPads. So it's pretty exciting stuff and we offer some administrative support with a couple of office depot gift cards to the winning departments as well. So remember any online recruiting platform can be used and I want you to tuck that little tidbit away as I share some new stuff that you are going to see for the very first time here. I also wanted to remind remind you of some things that we've done to kind of enhance our our membership goal. So we're working under a new dynamic have been for a year now. We think it's been very successful. So we're really going to challenge ourselves this year with our recruiting but I just wanted to remind everybody that conversions from part life to full life membership no longer count towards your goal. We still want to have internal strategies and how to get people to convert from part life to full life and that's we're trying to make sure we get them signed up with that credit card comes in right. That's a big part but new paid members are what we're counting towards goals. So whether they're new part life members or new full life members that's what counts towards our recruiting goals. So if you're a chapter that has a what seems to be a large goal I want you to remember and share this with your fellow chapter members and the folks in the department that the part life members count towards goal as well. We understand that not everybody can reach into their pocket and pay the full life amount out of the gate but get them on those recurring payments and on those installments and it goes quick. It really does. So we now base our goal on what we call our hot list. So what we're essentially trying to do is drive goal based on real world numbers. So if you live in an area that has a higher population for veterans in your area that are eligible for membership your goal is probably going to be more substantial than an area that has a lower veteran per capita population right. So we want to make sure that folks that got a lot of low hanging fruit around them you know try to snag a bigger bushel there if you will. So the way that you can do that is to just give us let us know that you're after a cop of your hot list and you can use the membership list request form. You've got to request it from us. We don't have a way to push that out automatically to you. Some chapters you know if you're in Baltimore for instance would be the list would just be mammoth and really unmanageable and you probably wouldn't be able to fully utilize it anyway. So we want to you know kind of massage the list with you and get you a couple of zip codes at a time but give us a and I'll show you the membership list request form here in a moment but you know give us a call shoot us the list request form shoot us an email however you want to request it from us and we'll get it to you. Hopefully once we get into what we're calling our new CRM the new system that's going to replace not only the membership system but a lot of our legacy systems at headquarters I'm hopeful that I'll be able to somehow employ true geocoding and some other neat tricks to leverage technology to make this stuff a little more automatic but for right now just you know get ahold of us at headquarters and we'll get that shout out to you. And please remember this is an evolving process you know we're tweaking things here or there you all have just been tremendous and given us great constructive feedback on how we can make this process better and I continue to welcome that. So this is the membership list request form you can request request any list with this certainly the hot list or just one of your membership list another kind of prospect list whatever it may be there's a drop down where you see select there there's a number of lists that you can request complete that form in the lines in the bottom just let us know what zip code you're looking for again if you're coming from an area that's utilizing multiple zip codes just choose one or two and we'll shoot that to you if it's if it's you know not enough if you run through that list we'll be happy to shoot you some more it's it's not an issue but certainly we're trying to turn those around as quickly as possible I've had a number of people come up to me since I've been here and say Doug I emailed the list and I had I had my zip codes hot list request back in just an hour or two so it's working really well. When executive director Barry Jezanoski did his report this morning he shared this video but I wanted to share it again because I'm very proud that we were able to produce this and a lot of times we get questions around the field is recruited so why does DAV have dues you know there's other organizations out there that don't have dues well they have a little bit of a different model than we do in this this membership video it's really designed for social media so I'd ask you to share it as often as you can and it just does a great job of kind of explaining what we do with membership dues and how DAV is kind of different from the other guys. Military service ingrains in all of us that we're stronger together and membership in DAV builds upon that preset by leveraging our strength in numbers to empower us through camaraderie and legislative action but did you know that you're also helping fellow veterans with your DAV membership dues while part of your dues helps produce DAV magazine which keeps you informed about topics important to you and your family a portion of these funds are also redistributed to your departments and chapters to directly support DAV programs and services offered in your community. Membership dues can help purchase vehicles that transport veterans to and from VA medical appointments they can provide supplies for service officers and support initiatives to assist homeless veterans and they can be used to support our incredible network of volunteers as they help take care of those who served our nation but most importantly your local DAV leaders help decide how these funds are used as they identify the greatest needs of the veterans in your area. DAV's programs and services are free to those who use them and membership dues are one way we all help ensure DAV continues to be there in your community fulfilling our promises to the men and women who served. Thanks for making a direct impact in the lives of fellow veterans. For more information check out our annual report here. Good stuff right. You know please feel free again to share that on social media as well as all of the other videos that we have on our DAV YouTube channel. There's the value of DAV membership video that you know very succinctly explains what eligibility what the eligibility criteria for DAV membership is. There it explains all of the benefits that are eligible to a member. Well a lot of them but certainly it gets it's a great place to start when you're talking to somebody about DAV membership. So there's these tools out there for you so you know please don't hesitate to use them these are great things to share at chapter meetings as well. So speaking of recruiting recruitment points do me a favor and raise your hand if you enjoy using DAV recruitment points to purchase swag. Look at that. A lot of folks. So remember you can earn one to three recruitment points for every person that you recruit. If you recruit online you can earn up to three. So again recruiting online is ever important. So we want to encourage you to continue to earn and spend those recruitment points. But like a lot of a lot of you know points ventures whether it's airline miles or rental car miles or whatever it happens to be points need to expire at some point we've been going many many years with this program now we've got to the point where we have a lot of folks who recruited one or two members you know 10 years or more ago and haven't recruited anybody since and that's not enough to buy anything in the store. So you know DAV is a great steward of a very generous American public's funds and we want to continue to do that. So we have to be accountable for these points so essentially a point is a dollar. So we have to be able to cash that out at some point. So that's why we need to announce that older points are going to begin to expire on July 1st 2020. So if any points are out there still that are older than three years next July 1st they're going to expire and then they will continue to expire on an annual three year rolling basis. So when we cash in your points at the store we certainly use your older points first but we just again to be good stewards of organizational funds we need to expire those points and I want people to use them. There is a detailed magazine article in the most recent copy of DAV magazine that talks about this a little bit more but certainly use those points and there's no better place to use them than right here. So this is very exciting what we've dubbed our recruit a warrior program. How many people in here have used the mobile DAV application to recruit people. Wow great terrific. So quite a few folks by the way not to interrupt I just saw someone taking a picture of the screen I'm happy if you shoot me an email at dwells at DAV.org to share the slides with you the only thing you won't get is the video because it's just too big but I didn't want you to feel compelled to have to take a picture of each slide certainly send me an email and I'll get that out to you. So a lot of folks have used our application and that was a great tool. We're we're happy that we were able to put that out but I think this is probably going to be a better option for you moving forward. So on this form this is what we're recalling the DAV member social hub for recruit a warrior and it is located at DAV.org slash warrior. So if you go to that site and you'll notice a part to put your email address there underneath the three icons little envelope and bullhorn there and the two people high fiving or whatever it is you put your your email address in there it'll essentially shoot you an email back letting you know if you're good to go or not. I'll talk about that more in a minute but the idea is that you can share a specific link or pardon me a link that is specific to you that every time somebody clicks on that link and completes an application you will automatically get credit for that recruitment. So you'll be able to share this link right now via email via Facebook or via Twitter and these the easy link signs there at the very top of the social hub will allow you to do that. So you can also personalize your your Facebook photo and other things through the hub will continue to enhance that as we move forward. So as I mentioned when you enter your email address you'll get back in one of two emails one like this that says hey here's your recruit a warrior referral link. So this is again unique to you as a recruiter and it gives you different options on how to on how to recruit folks and how to share. You can also just copy and paste that link and put it anywhere if they click on that link and end up becoming a member you're rocking and rolling you're getting credit for it. So if you don't or if you're not currently in our online membership system no worries the system will let you know that and it'll give you a couple of options. You may have put an email in that was not associated with your online membership or you may not have bought a membership in quite some time either way it's okay you're just going to email our staff at membership public at dv.org at the membership department or give us a call and we can get you your link provided to you so you can still participate in the program. So you get one of two emails back one with your link saying you're ready to to hit the ground running or another that's saying either try a different email or you'll just give us a call will will help you out okay but just because you get the second email I don't want you to be deterred give us a call and we'll get you squared away. So when you generate an email this is what it looks like and you know we've taken the liberty of providing you with some text so if you know cousin Billy is ready to be a member of DAV you can put his email address in in there it'll where the blue is where the from is it'll show up for you whatever email address you're using and you're more than welcome to modify the verbage a little bit if you want if you think there's something that's important for that person to hear from you a personal story whatever that may be by all means share that information with them and and let them know it's on the way and and ask him to to become a member join the brotherhood and sister to DAV. So that's the email version. This is what it looked like if you share it on Facebook and you're certainly welcome to tag people in it you know so I'm hopeful that I will see this all over my Facebook wall as I've been my wife and kids came with me to convention and they keep telling me that people are walking up to him going hey I know you and just through the Facebook page so so the words words getting out I really appreciate that. But yeah this is what the Facebook scenario looks like and it will allow you to you know share that on your social media tag folks in it and and even people that you know friends of friends and all the good stuff with social media works could be exposed to this so it's really terrific. And then finally this is kind of what the Twitter looks like. You know the important thing is to to to share the link via your Twitter page and you'll be able to to to recruit folks that you may be associated with on Twitter. So again DAV.org slash warrior is where you get to the site if you have an issue give us a call at national headquarters and we are officially going to launch we're doing a soft launch with all you here. This is ready and open you can certainly start using it right away. But to promote the program we're going to do a little bit of a competition September 15th and November 30th. We're going to have a contest for a thousand bucks a random drawing. So every person that you recruit every new recruit you bring in the DAV you get an additional entry for a thousand bucks. This guy saying he's already going to win. So I like it. Good stuff. So this is exciting stuff with something we've been working on for quite some time. I'm hopeful that it's very successful is is our CDR team in here. No they're out taking pictures. OK. Oh they are here. Why don't you stand up guys. Wave. So these are folks that helped develop this. Please give them a round of applause. And they may be asking some of you to to help us with some future campaigns by way of taking some some pictures. Just make sure they get you from the good side as I always say. And they love to using some of our promotional materials for other campaigns that we're thinking about. So I appreciate all your support in that endeavor. Lastly wanted to talk again about our member advantages programs and all of our wonderful partners. We're certainly always trying to figure out what our members like what our members need and basing the the relationships that we have with folks on that criteria and also with organizations that respect the service and sacrifice of our members. I would really encourage you to use these programs if you have a need to purchase flowers or rent a car or move or whatever the case may be. Please utilize our member advantages program. There's a booth in the main hall about that as well. You know our partners they just get elated at the responses that they get from the emails and the click-through rates you know going through and looking at everything. But we got to buy because the remember all of these programs the majority of them for every time you use that program and you purchase flowers DAV gets a percentage of that deal back to further fund DAV's programs and services. So not only are you getting good flowers for mom or the wife or whatever the case may be but you're also supporting DAV's programs and services. So please if you're looking to buy something consider using the member advantages partners. So I wanted to save time for questions as much as possible and I think I've been successful. Do we have any questions. Yes sir. I thought we had a mic in here. Did we not have a mic. No okay. Yeah so the question was they're using their own email for chapter and for chapter correspondence and a personal email. So the answer that yours right now the immediate answer I think would be to utilize the chapter portal more robustly and that could help you communicate easier with your chapter members. That's a tool that we have. So you are signing up members online using your personal email address. Okay okay please don't do that. Don't do that. There is a naming scheme that we have its first name last name zip code at DAV donor dot org first name last name zip code at DAV donor dot org. So for me it'd be Douglas Wells 41042 at DAV donor dot org. If a person does not have a private email you know if you want to take a moment and set them up with a Gmail account or whatever you're certainly welcome to do that. But you can use that naming scheme and be okay. You don't want to use your email address and especially you don't want to associate your email address with multiple memberships that causes problems for the online membership system because the email address is the unique identifier for that membership and it causes all kinds of problems with the payments and whatnot and I'm surprised Heather's head didn't like totally pop off her shoulders but okay right but we still we still want to make sure each member we sign up online has a unique identifier so use first name last name zip code at DAV donor dot org. Okay any other questions? Yes sir. Well so obviously our donors are incredibly important to the national organization and they that piece of the pie is you know financially speaking is a whole lot bigger because it supports a whole lot of programs you know so we rely on a generous American public to make sure that we have the funds that we need you know to ensure our programs and services are in the communities. So you know I don't know here's the thing recruiting is so much more successful when there's a personal connection when you reach out to somebody that you know is eligible for membership embrace them and you know bring them on board and mentor them we have great success we're having greater success than we ever had with donating or pardon me with recruiting digitally you know through banner ads or other means Facebook things like that but and those folks have typically had some type of positive experience whether it's through our transition service program a national service office assisting them getting a ride to the hospital whatever it may be or seeing the great work that we're doing you know before our elected officials but I think on the whole the greatest success that we have with recruitment is you know and having that person become a sustained active member in the organization or when we have that personal connection and they're mentored up in the organization so I don't know that on TV would be the best medium to recruit folks. So as I mentioned earlier there's a whole plethora of resources on our DAV YouTube channel also if you go to the members only section of DAV dot org all you need to access that is your membership number and we've actually just realigned that entire site now there are a number of resources to include webinars recorded there that are able to be shared a chapter in department functions that I think are going to be exactly what you're looking for. Yes ma'am. We'll get you next by the way. So the question was there's some difficulty when one of our members changes their last name and they they continue to stay on different lists so there's a scrubbing process that we put these lists through and you know I mean it's literally millions of names so sometimes we don't catch all of it and I appreciate you bringing that to my attention we're doing better with that certainly we want to make sure that our our lists are appropriate and the absolute complete intent of the hot list is to be the most current list of viable prospects that we have out there and they're not folks that have been sent you know 10 15 20 solicitations over the last 25 years we want them to be you know very very current new member prospects so yeah so yeah so what he was asking is can we put the DAV donor pardon me the first name last names of code at DAV donor scheme say put it somewhere yeah we can we can figure out a way to get that advertised it's on a number of the seminars that I've done and and webinars that I've done as well so and we're happy to share PowerPoint presentations for you all to share at your department of chapter functions right you're talking about a reminder on the actual application yep my CDR folks taking notes all right next question I need to clarify something I just want to ask just be sure so it's not the whole first name it's just the first letter of the first name correct in the scheme yeah no it like for me it'd be Douglas Wells 41042 that was question one question 2 is you said we could call the membership number what is the headquarters membership I mean what's the headquarters number I thought I had it on there yeah there we go there we go coming it wasn't my membership there we go okay sorry thanks Robin Doug Georgia Tain us 123 Melbourne Florida Merritt Island Florida question I have is when we're successful when we set a claim in claim is adjudicated the veteran wins you automatically send them a form an application for membership and as far as I can recall there's nothing on there that says you can fill us out or you can go to your local chapter so when you say we send them an application you're talking about the national service officers yes send them an application yes right okay so we our national service officers do at times solicit folks that we're assisting but when the membership application comes into headquarters our membership staff works very diligently to get them put in to the chapter that's the nearest to them I know that doesn't always work out as the crow flies I mean we do from people all over the state of Florida we do them from Georgia we've done them as far as New York and Alaska you're talking about recruiting we do claims and you know that's our primary job and here we are they get an automatic letter from the NSO when they're successful and they try to put them on the closest so we're losing members well by not getting remember the national service officers are now working on a cue a nationwide cue so we do a lot of representation that's digital now so a regional office the VA regional office in Detroit may handle claims from Los Angeles that doesn't mean that we as an organization are going to put them in chapters in Detroit that's how it works so we try to put them in chapters that are close to their home of record to their home their home address we also have a lot of snow birds that come down and have us do that understood and we have a way in the system to recognize that is there a way that on that letter that you send and you include that the NSO send out if not doing this online you can go to your local chapter and they can help you fill it out and get it sent in so right now I don't think that the system has the capability to do something like that but we could definitely look at that for future iterations that there's a lot of technicalities that go in there but I appreciate the suggestion for sure yes sir if I use the recruit if I use the recruit a warrior link and I send it to somebody and they sign up do I get notified that they signed up number one and number two are they put in my chapter so they're they are going to go to the actual digital application that we use for it's a mirror of the exact same application that if you go to dv.org and sign up okay so they're going to be putting in their information their address all that other good stuff it's just that your credit is going to be given to you automatically so again we will put them in the chapter that's most appropriate for them so if you've got a buddy from California that signs up he's going to be a member in California unless he chooses to be in your chapter so do you send me confirmation that he signed up or how do I know that he did so right now you're not getting confirmation for anybody else that signs up correct well no but I know if they sign them up because I'm sending the form in right right so no that's something that I can talk to our CDR team know about seeing if we can work out but we'll definitely be tracking who's who is signing up who other questions can we go back to that first slide the March madness who is the runner-up on that so Georgia all right where to go Georgia watch out Missouri I like it yes sir alright Doug thank you for all this information this afternoon wanted to ask if you send in a payment with with application and it does not go to your chapter what what happens to the payment you know does your chapter get the credit still so you're so you're asking if you sign up a member and you want them to be in your chapter right so was that indicated on the on the application well yes and I had a couple where they did not get a sign to our chapter so we didn't our chapter did not get the credit money wise yeah I'd have to invest have a specific example to investigate so if you come across that or if you can tell me exactly who you're talking about offline I can look at that but yeah typically if you say a member supposed to be you know belong to chapter one and we get the application process that way they're in chapter one so I I just can't think of a way in which that wouldn't occur if it was annotated at the time we receive the application where they belong to okay but yeah give me some specific and examples and we'll look into it yes sir yeah Doug Fred Smith I used to handle this years ago for the department the membership do you guys still send out these big sheets and wish you have to put them together like a puzzle according to zip code perspective numbers the half and the full so you're talking about the hot list spreadsheets yeah the new ones do they have the same thing yes yeah so every year we ask together every year we ask the department to let us know what zip codes belong to what chapters they know the lay of their land much better than we do from our vantage point Cincinnati so we ask them to do that every winter as we begin our processes for the next membership here so that continues to happen yes sir afternoon Doug when you first were talking about the awards you talked about populations in large cities compared to populations in the smaller areas do you also have something in your database that shows how many chapters there are within a certain radius of that population right so to kind of add to what I was saying earlier and I appreciate the question if you're a chapter in clean Texas where there's just you know a ton of veterans you're obviously your your goal based on the hot list is going to be larger than if you're in a chapter in Rhode Island let's say right so again that's why we depend on the departments to help us determine what zip codes belong to what now this isn't this has nothing to do with the historic geographical boundaries of chapters right because we know that sometimes there are our chapters that live in the same community and you know hey don't come past high street that's my area that that sort of stuff for fundraising right this has nothing to do with that I mean you know zip codes don't care about those boundaries typically so that's why we rely on the departments to help us with that decision-making process so basically that the answer your question directly that the chapter hot list you know can have prospects on it that are also on the hot list of another chapter because they share zip codes you see what I'm saying so what we feel like is whichever chip chapter gets to that prospect first wins yes sir don't shank chapter 18 she up in our Carolina had a question reference to an individual that had joined like 15 years ago but never finished paying out the membership you come to our chapter to join and when we sit in and he paid the full amount for his age at the time and we sit in there but they found out that he was in a nomad chapter so that we didn't get credit for what do we need to do in a situation like that and then how do we determine what rate they should be paying so if you have first of all if you have a suspicion that someone has been a member previously and their membership is now inactive certainly give us a call national headquarters and we can research that for you and give you all the answers to the questions you just posed you know where's this individual live with in respect to the DAV how much do they owe on their on their membership and of course we are only we're still going to honor that original rate for which they signed up on but the chapter would not other than the future dues distribution that they're going to get by virtue of having that member in their chapter there's no credit that's given for the conversion from part life to full life I can't hear him can you get the mic back real quick you have a follow-up sorry you're next do we have to do a transfer or do we just need to give him information for the chapter that he's joining so if he's in the nomad you need to do a transfer as well yep hi even Deborah Carol chapter 42 Texas when we have a transfer what's the timeframe of that transfer being processed so we do them as soon as we get them typically it takes not a lot of time at all but you know not every day in membership is created equal if we're in the member middle of a large you know solicitation mailing coming back and the membership specialists are inundated with processing new application that's a good problem to have right so you know it may take a little bit longer administratively for them to get to it then say in the middle of winter when it's not so busy we're also doing a lot of other things from the membership department such as texting to our members and prospects using a tool called hustle so if I appreciate you bringing it up because it reminded me of that aspect so if somebody says hey I got a text from somebody who said their DAV it's legit it's coming from either the membership department or our fundraising department or could be voluntary services as well so that's a great new tool everybody knows what an app is in terms of going to the app store downloading an app well all the research tells us that apps you know the return on investment is ever diminishing and you know I'm a prime example that I got 150 apps on my phone and I probably touched five of them in the last year so typically after the first 30 days you stop using apps so the way folks like to communicate is through SMS texting and we were very proud that we started with a trial program here in which we sent out to a couple hundred of our folks that came through our transition service program not one of them opted out some of them were surprised to get the text once they figured out we were legit and we communicated with them they were all very appreciative that we had reached out and continue to extend DAV's mission of service and hope to them not one person opted out from our texting program so that speaks highly of the service that we offer any other questions hey Doug thanks again um regarding the i'm gonna start i'm gonna start charging yeah i'll pay i appreciate it um i just sent out that at large list to all of california now just last week i got a call from one of the chapter commanders asking about how we delegate the zip codes and so i worked my way through that however the next thing he brought to me was that there were probably 14 15 people on his list that were active members that attend meetings that go out into the community and work with him including himself the chapter commander that are on that at-large list and so we talked about the whole transferring of membership from at-large to his chapter now he shouldn't be on that at-large list at all because he's been active member he's paid his dues and so all this criteria that i found out from national last week um he doesn't fit the bill and nor do 70% of the individuals that he brought to me so i understand that we still have to move him um through the process but how are we how should i as somebody who's at the headquarters level delegate this for 450,000 people right so uh obviously three important things there uh training training training um it's just getting the word out to the chapter members the only time that a member uh remember it uh can choose where they go is when they buy that initially buy their membership they get to pick what chapter they belong to uh subsequent that we have to have an approved transfer request because the chapter that they're looking to get into has to approve that they have to accept that member into their chapter so we've got to have those transfer forms completed uh you and i were talking about this the other day that uh it's why it's so important you know we want to do all we can if a chapter is struggling a little bit we want to do all we can to revitalize that chapter and get it reactivated but at the end of the day if if the chapter uh is no longer viable for whatever reason we don't want to just shutter the chapter uh in the strongest terms i can possibly lay out i want to merge that chapter with another chapter even if it's not completely geographically convenient it's so much better to merge the chapter uh with another active chapter so that one we can continue to pay distribution on those folks because once they go in at large nobody else is getting distribution right uh from the chapter but secondly all the numbers i look at tells me that once somebody ends up in the at large national in the national at large chapter the likelihood that they're going to reactivate into the local chapter is is slim so everything that you can do to help us with that i'd appreciate it um so we're starting to run a little bit over here i'm going to take one or two more questions and then uh we're going to call it an afternoon yes ma'am i have a quick question sharon bill ado colorado springs unit 26 auxiliary but do i go to the same website to pick up our at large members or our people like that and use the same form for the zip codes yeah that same membership uh request list you can request an at large uh listing of those folks that are in your chapters jurisdiction absolutely yes sir one more over here and then we're going to uh i'll be around for individual questions for a little bit leave that guy alone i'm thomas harper i'm with chapter 126 in baytown texas hi thomas how you doing good i started a recruitment program that we uh started back in march when you were having your march madness uh membership drive and uh we managed to sign on three new members if our when our chapter we had a we had uh food and and we invited local chapters around the area of harris county and also in houston and it was somewhat successful i'm still continuing with that drive uh is my question is if you get so many members signed up do you get recruiting pins or uh do you have that type of program right so friends we have uh bronze silver and gold stars for recruiting uh and also we have the beaten pin uh where if you recruit a hundred plus members you're eligible for that and that also puts you on path towards the hall of fame uh if you do that three years in a row um but uh yeah i just sent out a memo detailing all of the different awards and there's also a premium recruiter award uh that comes out as well so uh certainly um uh we do have a listing of all this stuff i think i just misspoke a little bit it's so 99s for the beating yet um so certainly um uh we're very grateful for all the hard work that our recruiters do and want to recognize them accordingly so if you send me an email i will share that memo with you so you know exactly what the program looks like okay so folks a couple of things i'm going to put out some flyers here for our recruiter warrior program uh so feel free to come up and take one i also have some of my business cards here and i and the rest of the membership committee will will be here to answer some questions it is my pleasure to serve you if there's anything we can ever do don't hesitate to reach out you've got my name you've got my phone number in my email thanks a lot folks