In just a few weeks District Governor-Elect Chuck will be taking office as Governor of District 12N.  He has already started his year’s objectives and goals with a planning meeting held over the past weekend.  The goals he has set are bold and his standards are high.  He has formed a great team of Lions to assist him in accomplishing the tasks he has set.  DGE Chuck and I have had a number of conversations about when he should start and I agreed that the sooner he started the better for the district as a whole.

We have had a tremendous problem with the loss of membership in 12N and we need to stop the slide.  The upcoming year’s objectives are twofold. The primary objective is to start a number of new clubs in the district where there is little to no Lions influence in the area.  Second would be to help the struggling clubs with retention and growth.  We have also agreed that a club must be willing to help themselves before we would ask district Lions to help them to recruit new members.

Also there must be a change of direction and attitude of each struggling club to help entice new members to join.  The process of analyzing what is wrong must be conducted by each club.

• Why are your members leaving and dropping out of Lionism?
• Why are your members not bringing in prospective new members?
• Are you addressing real issues within your communities or are you just having meetings to have a meeting?

We must know what our community needs are and address them.  The sky is the limit and we must not hold onto old projects if they have become outdated and non productive.  It is simple, what we did 20 and 30 years ago is not working.  The needs have changed and the method in which we address them is challenging and sometimes hard to accomplish.

The need for glasses in our communities is a growing issue with the current economic environment, which is creating a demand that our clubs can’t keep up with.   We must develop new ways to raise funds to support those needs, how do we do it?  We can look to our younger and newer members for new ideas and let them carry the water for those projects.  A suggestion is to Partner with other Lions Clubs to help cover areas of need that neither club can do on their own.  T

he Walk for Sight will be held at the Fountain City Lions Club Park on the 21 of May.  See you all there.

DG Bill McDonald