I feel that Mensa is a dynamic and ever-changing organization. Our members have a wide range of interests and priorities, and it follows that Mensa membership will mean something different to every member. For me, Mensa is primarily, and most importantly, a social organization. While we have several worthwhile endeavors in addition to the social aspect, such as scholarships, community service and gifted youth resources, I firmly believe that everything comes back to personal interaction between members - whether in person or online.

Members having fun - the best advertisement you can ask for

It's important to remember that the spirit of volunteerism has to be fostered and nurtured. Volunteers don't usually appear unasked for. The best way I have always found to encourage volunteers is to make things fun. As an organization, we need to remember to facilitate those personal connections among our members, and especially our volunteers. Volunteers who enjoy the people they work with will continue to volunteer.

Shooting pool at a fundraising event for our local scholarships - while wearing our local group T-shirts

In order for our organization to grow, we need to do a better job of both recruitment and retention. In particular, though, I think we need to look at retention. I recently looked at the membership records for my own local group, which is the 7th largest in the nation. In the past 10 years, we have had almost as many members lapsed as we currently have active. If all of our lapsed members renewed, our group would effectively double in size.

To me, that says that we need to work on the value provided to our members. I realize that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of reasons why people let their memberships lapse. And the reality is, many people who do lapse will never tell us why. The best solution I can offer is that we continue to develop new ways to reach our members in the hopes that the niches they are searching for can be filled. I believe we need to be working steadily towards this.

A community service beach cleanup with members of my local group

Treasurer's Role

The primary purpose of the Treasurer is to act as the Financial Officer of American Mensa, be responsible for all financial records, and provide for an annual audit of the financials. Officially, from the bylaws, that is the extent of the job. The Actions Still In Effect (ASIEs) flesh out the job more to include that the Treasurer shall provide budgetary status reports to the AMC at its regularly scheduled meetings, chair the Finance and Audit Committee, be a member of the Licensing Committee and Executive Committee, and provide an annual report to the membership during the Annual Business Meeting at the Annual Gathering. While that sounds a bit dry, I believe that having a Treasurer who is passionate about both American Mensa and finance/accounting is essential for the continued financial stability of the organization.

One of the ideals I have embraced during my first term as Treasurer is the idea that the Treasurer should be an education resource to the entire AMC. I consider a huge part of my job to be making sure that the members of the AMC who are not accounting/financial people feel comfortable in having the appropriate amount of information to make good decisions. In some cases, that means teaching about financial concepts with which they may not be familiar. To that end, I have provided Education by Treasurer presentations at each meeting of the AMC. These presentations are intended to be bite-size lessons in key principles that the AMC needs to understand. A good Treasurer should be able to competently and clearly answer the questions of both the AMC and the membership at large about both the current state of American Mensa's finances and provide the context needed to understand the overall picture.