Note to Self: Periodically remember the un-wired

My President, at our Program Management Committee meeting last night (no, I don't ever get to see my kids, they hate me), reported that she had called every retired member who was listed in our Directory as NOT having an email address, to tell them about a memorial service we are hosting, just in case they had not heard about it through regular channels.

She ended up having great conversations with all of these people, who wanted to know all about what was going on with the Center and were very interested in getting the gossip and hearing about progress. There are currently 31 people in this group, which is not too bad - and since we can assume every single new member will have an email address, we can therefore assume this number will dwindle as time goes on.

Of course, we have very deliberately moved from snail mail communications to electronic over the last few years, which means for these few remaining people who are NOT wired, that they receive a twice-yearly newsletter, our program brochures in the Spring, our Catalogue in August, and a handful (less than 5) paper mailings which are usually requests for donations and that sort of thing.

We are generally OK with that. We have many Life members who are over 70 but still extremely active, teaching, supervising or otherwise attending our events, so this small group is really those who are "retired" from the Center as well as from their practices.

But, the President thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to have an annual get-together for this small group, and see if we couldn't bring them back (so to speak) and in doing so give them a support system and community of peers which could still be very enjoyable for them even if they were no longer in practice (in the healthcare term, as well as, I suppose, in the general sense!).

Which I thought, since one of the ways we provide value to our members is through our community, sounds like a great idea. And I should make a note to remember, on an annual basis, to have one small event which specifically seeks to ensure we're not leaving anyone behind.