Miriam Krajewski shared the following information at the June Board Meeting, and it was decided that it should be shared with the club as a whole.
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At the club meeting where we discussed whether or not we should break away from the national club, an offhand comment was made that the club’s owner, Cheryl Beaudreault, would likely be retiring soon and selling the club, and in fact might have already tried to do so. This sparked a thought that I could potentially buy it and modernize various aspects of the club. I contacted Cheryl and she advised that while she had not previously considered selling the club, she was now at a point where she was interested in doing so to the right buyer. We went on to have a nearly 3 hour conversation about the history of the club (enormously interesting and I hope she writes a book!), some of the factors that make successful groups, and some challenges facing the club going forward. As we have decided to stay with the National club I wanted to share some elements of this conversation, so that the club could reconsider some of the things the St Louis group has done that has moved us away from the club’s original structure for better or worse.
I also note that one of the frustrations that led to the conversations about breaking away was the poor communications between our chapter and national in recent years. Cheryl told me that she had been very unwell for about 3-4 years, and was just returning to good health in recent months. This may partially explain why the experience of board members in recent years is so vastly different to that of those serving on boards some years ago. I found Cheryl to be smart and knowledgeable with very good insights into what makes different branches tick and I’m very grateful for our conversation.
Note that these notes are summarized memories from a long conversation. There may be factual errors about some of the specifics but I think I’ve captured the gist. Apologies to Cheryl for any details I might have misremembered.
Originally the club was targeted to women who were college educated ‘trailing spouses’ who followed their successful husband’s careers from state to state. Originally a member of the club was responsible for recruiting the women who had recently moved into the city’s wealthy neighbourhoods. The recruiter, following strict dress and formality codes, would go to the prospective member’s home to discuss the club over coffee in fine china cups. Sometimes it would take several contacts before the woman would join but then, as now, once they joined the club was generally a huge part of their social lives. The constitution and much of the structure and running of the club was heavily based on the sororities that the women were familiar with from college, and it included formal rituals and ceremonies. One principle was that after two years women ‘graduated’ from the club to become alumni. While they could still attend club events they no longer had voting rights and could not serve on the board.
Cheryl was recruited to the branch in Atlanta in this way. Soon after joining she was invited to become a recruiter (I think then as now called the Director). As a recruiter she would make appointments with women new to the area and visit them in their homes to discuss joining the club. The club at that time had one sponsor who paid the club $1.50 for every visit made, whether or not the woman joined the club. Half of this went to the club and half to the recruiter. Cheryl saw potential to earn an income this way but realised that with only one sponsor the reward for effort was very low, so she started to recruit more sponsors, asking the gardeners, plumbers and other visitors to her home if they wanted to become sponsors. Soon she had many sponsors and for each visit she was now making a good return and her role as director became a full time job. A couple of years later Cheryl was invited to purchase the national club from the family who started it, and she was able to replicate this sponsorship system to the other chapters. Each chapter had a director who was employed by the club, who was responsible for recruiting both new sponsors and new members, and acted as a conduit between both. The benefit to the club was a steady stream of new members, to the director an income, and to the club overall a source of income for overheads. The benefit to sponsors was a pool of new residents to whom to promote their business. The benefit to members was of course that they found the club, but also that many of the sponsors had services they would be looking for as new residents. A win-win-win.
This system continues today but has struggled due to environmental changes. First, women started to become reluctant to have strangers in their homes and equally, the directors become reluctant about visiting stranger’s homes, so the visits changed to phone calls. The directors found new members by purchasing lists from various companies that detailed information about incoming residents, but privacy laws started to restrict the amount of data in these lists. The volume of cold calling led to a rise in the screening of unsolicited calls, caller ID technology allowed us to ignore calls from people we didn’t know. Do Not Call registers became commonplace. It has become increasingly difficult for directors to find and contact new residents. Nonetheless, this system continues (sponsors currently paying $5 per contact, with half still going to the director and half to the club). At some point in the past the St Louis chapter Director chose not to undertake the recruitment aspect of the role and our director simply became a longstanding advisor to the club and the contact point for our sponsors. National took over the recruitment duties on our behalf. Currently Annie, who works for Cheryl, is paid an hourly rate to contact potential St Louis members on lists from mortgage companies. The hit rate is low because of the poor amount of detail now available in these lists. Furthermore, as Annie is calling from interstate the number is more likely to be ignored or blocked. Nonetheless, Annie does sometimes send through to our chapter a list of contacts she has been able to make. We have discussed before that we have had a very low conversion rate from Annie’s lists – very few if any members have been recruited from these lists. Most of the other chapters do still have an employed director who continues to make contacts in return for sponsorship payment. This is the ‘business side’ of the club and Cheryl admits that due to these cumulative problems, it is not a very profitable business at the moment.
Now to the social side of the club – the part that matters most to each of us. For those who are unaware, the St Louis chapter (and some others) have made decisions over the years that have moved us away from the original chapter model. In particular, we no longer have alumni and older members are allowed to vote and participate on the board. We no longer require members to be new to the St Louis community.
Cheryl believes that the branches that have moved away from the core of new members running the club have suffered. She described the analogy that new members behave like puppies. They are excited, enthusiastic, willing to jump in. They are open to making new friends and trying new things, and they have time to do so. They may not know exactly how things run but they can’t really damage much, especially if board positions and activity chair jobs are simple and all the tools are provided. Members tend to become good friends with those women who join around the same time as they do (I think this remains true) – after a couple of years they have settled into a routine of chosen activities and the friends they socialize with, and they have less need to befriend new women. Cheryl quipped that established members behave more like ‘older dogs’, becoming territorial and protective. Cheryl found that those chapters where the board and activity groups are largely managed by older members tend to flounder more than those that stuck with the original model. Cheryl also believes that activity groups entirely composed of older members should be retired out of the club. Cheryl wasn’t keen on inviting members who were existing residents to join the club because these women had their own ties to the community and were less likely to ‘behave like puppies’. She also noted that women who join in pairs or small groups never seem to become as involved. (I note that the St Louis chapter has had some very successful lifelong St Louis residents come into the club, but I believe the most successful of those usually had some kind of life change (retirement is common) and hence were looking for new friends, so that they joined the club in the same spirit as other ‘puppies’. I mention this as food for thought as we think about how to target new members.)
I think the lessons for us are:
I hope this helps our chapter in thinking about how to grow and thrive. If anyone wants to chat to me about my conversation with Cheryl please let me know.
Thanks!
Miriam Krajewski
-----------------------------
At the club meeting where we discussed whether or not we should break away from the national club, an offhand comment was made that the club’s owner, Cheryl Beaudreault, would likely be retiring soon and selling the club, and in fact might have already tried to do so. This sparked a thought that I could potentially buy it and modernize various aspects of the club. I contacted Cheryl and she advised that while she had not previously considered selling the club, she was now at a point where she was interested in doing so to the right buyer. We went on to have a nearly 3 hour conversation about the history of the club (enormously interesting and I hope she writes a book!), some of the factors that make successful groups, and some challenges facing the club going forward. As we have decided to stay with the National club I wanted to share some elements of this conversation, so that the club could reconsider some of the things the St Louis group has done that has moved us away from the club’s original structure for better or worse.
I also note that one of the frustrations that led to the conversations about breaking away was the poor communications between our chapter and national in recent years. Cheryl told me that she had been very unwell for about 3-4 years, and was just returning to good health in recent months. This may partially explain why the experience of board members in recent years is so vastly different to that of those serving on boards some years ago. I found Cheryl to be smart and knowledgeable with very good insights into what makes different branches tick and I’m very grateful for our conversation.
Note that these notes are summarized memories from a long conversation. There may be factual errors about some of the specifics but I think I’ve captured the gist. Apologies to Cheryl for any details I might have misremembered.
Originally the club was targeted to women who were college educated ‘trailing spouses’ who followed their successful husband’s careers from state to state. Originally a member of the club was responsible for recruiting the women who had recently moved into the city’s wealthy neighbourhoods. The recruiter, following strict dress and formality codes, would go to the prospective member’s home to discuss the club over coffee in fine china cups. Sometimes it would take several contacts before the woman would join but then, as now, once they joined the club was generally a huge part of their social lives. The constitution and much of the structure and running of the club was heavily based on the sororities that the women were familiar with from college, and it included formal rituals and ceremonies. One principle was that after two years women ‘graduated’ from the club to become alumni. While they could still attend club events they no longer had voting rights and could not serve on the board.
Cheryl was recruited to the branch in Atlanta in this way. Soon after joining she was invited to become a recruiter (I think then as now called the Director). As a recruiter she would make appointments with women new to the area and visit them in their homes to discuss joining the club. The club at that time had one sponsor who paid the club $1.50 for every visit made, whether or not the woman joined the club. Half of this went to the club and half to the recruiter. Cheryl saw potential to earn an income this way but realised that with only one sponsor the reward for effort was very low, so she started to recruit more sponsors, asking the gardeners, plumbers and other visitors to her home if they wanted to become sponsors. Soon she had many sponsors and for each visit she was now making a good return and her role as director became a full time job. A couple of years later Cheryl was invited to purchase the national club from the family who started it, and she was able to replicate this sponsorship system to the other chapters. Each chapter had a director who was employed by the club, who was responsible for recruiting both new sponsors and new members, and acted as a conduit between both. The benefit to the club was a steady stream of new members, to the director an income, and to the club overall a source of income for overheads. The benefit to sponsors was a pool of new residents to whom to promote their business. The benefit to members was of course that they found the club, but also that many of the sponsors had services they would be looking for as new residents. A win-win-win.
This system continues today but has struggled due to environmental changes. First, women started to become reluctant to have strangers in their homes and equally, the directors become reluctant about visiting stranger’s homes, so the visits changed to phone calls. The directors found new members by purchasing lists from various companies that detailed information about incoming residents, but privacy laws started to restrict the amount of data in these lists. The volume of cold calling led to a rise in the screening of unsolicited calls, caller ID technology allowed us to ignore calls from people we didn’t know. Do Not Call registers became commonplace. It has become increasingly difficult for directors to find and contact new residents. Nonetheless, this system continues (sponsors currently paying $5 per contact, with half still going to the director and half to the club). At some point in the past the St Louis chapter Director chose not to undertake the recruitment aspect of the role and our director simply became a longstanding advisor to the club and the contact point for our sponsors. National took over the recruitment duties on our behalf. Currently Annie, who works for Cheryl, is paid an hourly rate to contact potential St Louis members on lists from mortgage companies. The hit rate is low because of the poor amount of detail now available in these lists. Furthermore, as Annie is calling from interstate the number is more likely to be ignored or blocked. Nonetheless, Annie does sometimes send through to our chapter a list of contacts she has been able to make. We have discussed before that we have had a very low conversion rate from Annie’s lists – very few if any members have been recruited from these lists. Most of the other chapters do still have an employed director who continues to make contacts in return for sponsorship payment. This is the ‘business side’ of the club and Cheryl admits that due to these cumulative problems, it is not a very profitable business at the moment.
Now to the social side of the club – the part that matters most to each of us. For those who are unaware, the St Louis chapter (and some others) have made decisions over the years that have moved us away from the original chapter model. In particular, we no longer have alumni and older members are allowed to vote and participate on the board. We no longer require members to be new to the St Louis community.
Cheryl believes that the branches that have moved away from the core of new members running the club have suffered. She described the analogy that new members behave like puppies. They are excited, enthusiastic, willing to jump in. They are open to making new friends and trying new things, and they have time to do so. They may not know exactly how things run but they can’t really damage much, especially if board positions and activity chair jobs are simple and all the tools are provided. Members tend to become good friends with those women who join around the same time as they do (I think this remains true) – after a couple of years they have settled into a routine of chosen activities and the friends they socialize with, and they have less need to befriend new women. Cheryl quipped that established members behave more like ‘older dogs’, becoming territorial and protective. Cheryl found that those chapters where the board and activity groups are largely managed by older members tend to flounder more than those that stuck with the original model. Cheryl also believes that activity groups entirely composed of older members should be retired out of the club. Cheryl wasn’t keen on inviting members who were existing residents to join the club because these women had their own ties to the community and were less likely to ‘behave like puppies’. She also noted that women who join in pairs or small groups never seem to become as involved. (I note that the St Louis chapter has had some very successful lifelong St Louis residents come into the club, but I believe the most successful of those usually had some kind of life change (retirement is common) and hence were looking for new friends, so that they joined the club in the same spirit as other ‘puppies’. I mention this as food for thought as we think about how to target new members.)
I think the lessons for us are:
- We need to find new ways to find members. We each know from personal experience that when we found the club it very often changed our lives. We need to find the women who need to know that we exist. The club’s traditional methods of finding those women are not working very well any more.
- We are most likely to have our new members join if we have a personal one on one conversation with them, like the original meetings over coffee in the living room of a person’s home. Women often need encouragement to join as they feel unsure and nervous. We know that those women who attend our Welcome Coffees are very likely to join, but we need to get them there in the first place. Passive measures such as ads or a website help raise awareness of the club but cannot replace personal conversations that encourage women to take the plunge.
- Even if we don’t want to formerly ‘graduate’ women from the club after two years we do need to actively encourage newer members to take control of the club. We need to simplify some of the more complicated board positions. Older members should only hold these jobs as a last resort, if we have been unable to fill them from new members.
- I feel that we should separate in the newsletter those activities that are closed to new members (perhaps just a short listing with contact numbers for the benefit of existing members) and those that are open to new members. If older groups have openings they can advertise as such, but the main listing should be for activity clubs that women can join now.
- We should be better at encouraging and equipping new members to start their own activity groups (which are often the most successful, since the women joining those groups are all ‘puppies’ joining around the same time.) It is easier to join a group of ‘puppies’ than to be a new member joining a group of established friends. Our main goal is to integrate women into their new communities by providing connections to new friendships, not to keep a particular longstanding activity group alive.
- Older members need to make a concerted effort to ‘step back’. This is very difficult for some of us, particularly as the club has meant so much to our lives.
- All of this won’t work unless we have a stream of new members coming in, which takes me back to the first point. We are not alone, it is something many chapters are struggling with.
I hope this helps our chapter in thinking about how to grow and thrive. If anyone wants to chat to me about my conversation with Cheryl please let me know.
Thanks!
Miriam Krajewski
