Your officers have all accepted goals this year – all of them related to growth. I believe your new officers are very committed people, but they can’t change the decline in participation nationwide by themselves. You will have to help as well.

So how can you help? First, volunteer to help AVA Committees. We need more working volunteers to help our clubs and attract more participants at events, but committees like Training and Marketing can’t help us much with only one or two members like last term. I’ll try to make it easier to volunteer by asking each of the committee Chairs to design specific tasks based on your desires so that you can know how much of your time and effort is required. But you must start by showing your interest. Descriptions of committees are at www.ava.org. Click on the MEMBERSHIP button, then on AVA COMMITTEES.

Second, focus on quality and fun in your events. You are in our sport because you believe in the concept and you were attracted by the events, the awards, the achievement program books or the people. Do what you can to bring that fun back to our sport. Thank event volunteers for their service and think twice about complaining.

Some time ago, I heard a new member of my club listening to a description of a coming event from a person in another club. After hearing the description, she asked, “How many “F’s” does your event have? Puzzled, the person asked what she meant. Her response was, “Well, AVA believes in Fun, Fitness and Friendship and I know most clubs love Food, so there are really four F’s. How many F’s does your event have? If you have only a drive-by walk, that is, drive, do the walk and go home, that’s only one F and I’m not interested in one F events. I only go to 3 F events or better.” Why not put ourselves in that new member’s shoes and take another look at the quality of our events.

Third, I’ve heard many tell me, “Curt, we love awards, but they are just too expensive.” My response is “Who said your club has to pay for the awards?” Ask local businesses to pay for them. Yes, Yes, I know. We all hate to ask for money. But when I took a deep breath and asked perhaps ten companies, I was surprised at how easy it was to raise $1,100 from sponsors to put on a quality event. You can do it! Sell to sponsors the name of each walk, each checkpoint and advertising at the start/finish. If it works for ARCO Arena and SAFECO Field, it will work for us.

Fourth, consider something we completely control – our own attitudes. Have you ever run into a ‘bad hair day’ attitude at an event? Me too. And so do those new participants who want to try out volkssports. So let’s always put on our happy faces at events. Place your club’s happiest persons at the start and finish. Have your finish point people read the name on each IVV book and congratulate the walker by name or thank them for attending the event. Bring a cowbell to the finish point and find an excuse to ring the bell and announce some milestone out loud and ask other workers to give a round of applause. That even makes fun for the workers! I could go on and on but you get the idea. Treat our participants like company in our home.

We will grow!!!
Curt Myron