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Members who take advantage of any of the club services listed below owe the club either 25 hours of volunteer time or $100, payable before the fiscal year ends on June 30. The board will review hardship cases one at a time.
For the board, and for anyone who has followed the newsletters over the past two years, this did not come out of nowhere. Newer members may have been caught off guard, and those who skip the club newsletters were likely stunned. It is a reality the board had to confront as club resources kept being used at the usual pace while fewer members were willing to help run the events.
Take costume sewing, for instance: until the most recent club show we never struggled to find people to sew. Last time we did. We realized that if this happens again this year, it is unfair to load a handful of wonderful volunteers with sewing costumes and more for members who do not volunteer. A fairer approach is to let non-volunteers pay us to hire someone to do the work for them. That is the only reason for the $100, if we ever need to collect it. Honestly, we do not want the money; we simply want to be fairer than we have been.
Our largest fund-raiser is the fireworks booth in the Safeway parking lot at Guernville Rd. & Marlowe. Last year roughly 10 people did 80% of the work for a club of 400+ members. This year we started with so few helpers that it looked like we might have to shut the stand and raise general dues to cover the losses. At the last (and I do mean last) minute, about three heroes showed up to keep it open. Thank those unnamed individuals for keeping dues as low as they are.
As for the show: it is a high-budget production meant to give our young skaters a taste of what it is like to be part of a skating troupe.
The kids especially want the show and look forward to it, and parents and adult skaters want it too. This is a show year, and we need to put on a show for you if at all possible, so the board chose this option reluctantly.
Let us all pitch in this year, find better ways to work together, and let each other know when help is needed. Let us solve this as a club and do away with mandatory work time. I put in hundreds of hours myself, and I still dislike the idea of "having" to put in 25 hours.
From the board's point of view (13 voting members, all volunteers), there is only so much time available to track down help. After doing what they could over the past three years, they reluctantly turned to this attention-getter.
What they want you to know is that this is not just their club (the Board of Directors') — it is my club, your club, and theirs too. It really is! Come and take part. Come to your board meetings and see what goes on. You will find a handful of friendly, hard-working volunteers there. And by the way, they decided that board meeting time should not count as volunteer hours under this program.
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Volunteer hours keep club events, shows, and fund-raisers running for every member. If you are unsure whether an activity counts, or you expect a hardship, talk with a board member before the June 30 deadline so the club can review your situation individually.