The Blue Book and Other News

By Juanita Soutar
National President-Elect
  

Hello, fellow Progressians!  We’re now getting close to winding down another fiscal year in Progress (where has the time gone???) and I’m sure many of you continue to be busy with your fundraising, community service and social events.  I wish you much success with these endeavours.

This is also the time of year when the clubs and Regions are starting preparations for AGMs and upcoming elections.  Please consider being nominated for the many positions that are available.  The organizational and leadership skills and experience you can acquire by serving the Canadian Progress Club on a club, Regional and National level can serve you and the Club well throughout your Progress and personal lives.  I encourage each of you to take advantage of these opportunities.

As you know, one of my mandates this year is to help facilitate updating the Blue Book  (the CPC Guidelines and Procedures Manual).  Our committee is now in place and the work has begun. I’d like to thank the following members for volunteering their time, energy and expertise over the next few months for this project:

• Penny O’Rourke, Vancouver Evergreen

• Lindsay Blackett, Calgary Downtown

• Tom Kohl, Calgary Bow River

• Donna Peake, Regina Wascana

• Tony Murray, St. John’s

• Tom Whitehead, Calgary Bow River

• Mary Kutarna, Toronto Trillium

• Gary Nakamura, Calgary North

Also, I’d still like your assistance in providing information to help our clubs with membership recruitment and retention for a Membership Resource Centre on our www.progressclub.ca website.  Information and ideas of what has worked for your club, such as details about your successful new member nights, solicitation letter templates, advertising and promotions, mentorship programs, members’ “bonding” social events, and other methods your club uses to attract and retain members, would all be very helpful.  Please send the information to me in Word or PDF format by e-mail at Juanita.Soutar@td.com.

Finally, have you input your information on the Progress Club Member Communication System (MCS) database yet?  Thank you to all those Club Presidents and members across Canada who have already done it, but there are still many yet to do so.  This is a very important system for Progress, which will be used not only for contact information, but more importantly for club census reporting.  So, it’s vital that the information be provided on the database.

If you’re not yet familiar with the system, it doesn’t take much time and it’s very easy to do.  First of all, the Club President, or their delegate, will input the names and e-mail addresses of their club members into the system on the www.progressclub.ca website, which will then generate a confidential password that’s sent to each individual member. Then, all you need to do is log into the system, input the rest of your information, and remember to keep it current.  That’s all there is to it, but if you need assistance, speak to your Club President or contact your Regional MCS Administrator.

Take care and I wish you all the best.