Membership Coordinator

Well done, good choice. Maybe performing in front of the crowd is not quite your thing, but you are very keen to help the chapter?

This role is absolutely pivotal to the success of the chapter. Get it right and you are looking at growth of 50%.

• Besides the description in the manual, what does the MC need to do?
  COMMUNICATION outside the meeting. This is SUCH a big deal. And probably not mostly on email. You are part of a team, dealing with all sorts of issues, some clear cut, and some very touchy-feely human issues. The latter are NOT best dealt with on email, especially when it involves telling something they don't want to hear.
  
• Plan all the committee meetings
  There are supposed to be at least six in the coming half year. We propose that you schedule an extra six small ones to deal with new member applications. You should also be realistic about how long these meetings take. A rushed 15 minutes at the end of the normal meeting multiplied by six equals 1.5 hours for the entire six months.
  Are you seriously trying to run a chapter for six months with ninety minutes of meetings?  We doubt it very much.
  So you must schedule all the meetings AND make sure every committee member knows when they are committed AND send out the reminders two weeks in advance AND not get sloppy in the second three months because your enthusiasm is waning.
  
• Discipline in the first three weeks
  There are other blog posts explaining why discipline is critical. How the CD and team come across in the first three weeks sets the tone for the coming semester. Ultimately YOU are supposed to send out the warning letters, so before the start, get them all planned out, have the process absolutely understood in your head, make sure that if any members question about why for example, member X is on two warnings, that you are giving consistent answers to every enquiry.
• Three strikes....
  You need to decide before the first meeting of the semester whether the quality of the record keeping you have inherited from your predecessor is good enough to maintain, or should you start again? What this means in whether you stand up at the first meeting and say "The lack-of-attendance slate is wiped clean, you are all on zero strikes" or whether you say "Several of you have had warnings issued, and the six month windows that these warnings relate to are continuing".
  If you are doing the latter, you have to be absolutely confident that you records are correct. Having said all these warnings, this is still how it should be done.
• The work load
  It comes up again and again that the MC resents the work they have to do, yet they refuse to ask for help. Our regional director is Laura Hurren, and her excellent advice was simply "Use the membership Committee members". Of course, the load shared between four people is easily manageable! But are you skilled enough to manage a team?

There is more to say about this role. Much of this role is behind the scenes, much of it is information processing and communication, so if you are not good at these two skills, GET SOME HELP. Talk to the CD and ST, they should be willing to share the load and think of ways of getting the job done more easily.