End of the day

A short update at the end of a very long day.

The afternoon seminars that I was able to attend were really informative and had some great discussions.  The "Attract and Retain Members" session had lots of information that had to be presented in a very short time span. It was like speed dating with powerpoint presentations. Susi showed a wonderful promotional video about skating that was really well done and all the attendees were given a copy. Of course, my only question was if it was on YouTube yet?  It wasn't but we'll get it up there soon. I just don't have the bandwidth to do it from here.

Next was the fundraising session. Stacy Marsh, the new development director for US Figure Skating hosted a panel that discussed a lot of different ways to do fundraising for your club. Ryan Jahnke gave a great presentation on his new venture, MySkatingMall.com - it is a great way for clubs to do fundraising and a great way for skaters to sell their gently used skating outfits.
Susi Werhli talked about raising money by having a Skate-a-thon and then Susan Bonn talked about a San Francisco event that helped raise money and awareness.

And then it was time for Debbie Downer - me. I talked about doing traditional ways of fundraising that don't involve butterbraids or frozen pizza - straight charitable gifts. But the downer part happens when I share the do's and don'ts of fundraising and how the clubs have to be aware that fundraising that provides financial credit for the skaters is not appropriate and can run their clubs into some trouble with the IRS.

Grabbed a quick bite to eat and then back to the InterClub Forum. Lanie DeMore organized it and there was a great turn-out with representatives from all of the interclubs. I think it's always good for interclub councils to share information and talk about how they do things.  My role was to talk about bylaws and reminded them that bylaws should be reviewed on a regular basis and that bylaws that haven't been changed since 1959 may need to be updated. (to say the least)

I didn't make it to the Synchro session, but was told by various attendees that the majority of the conversation centered on changing the team sizes and the cross-over skaters. More tomorrow at the caucus session.

Tomorrow starts early for me with the membership committee breakfast at 7 and then the Midwestern Caucus meeting at 8:30. Will blog from there.

Good night all!

That's it for now folks!