Holly-
For the meeting room space, Have you checked with: 1. Area public libraries 2. Area schools 3. Area 4-H programs 4. County extension officer 5. Any museums in the area **Warning this is going to sound harsh** Your members are adults, they know when the meetings are, and they need to be responsible for getting the information for themselves, as long as you (the group) make a good faith effort to get the info out there. If you are sending out the emails and are willing to talk to people who call about what happened, I think you are making a good faith effort. Or course, you will run into people who just want to be pissed off and/or not take responsibility for taking care of their own information needs, and you will probably just have to accept that they are going to be that way. That being said, have you considered a contact list after each meeting where people who attended the meeting call the people who weren't there? Time consuming but might save some feelings. John S. _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Holly Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 6:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [fibernet] fiber group growth Our local spinning group, with its slightly smaller weaving group offshoot, and serving a rather large quite rural area, is suffering from some growth pains right now, and I was wondering what others have done at this stage of the game. We have one spinning and one weaving meeting monthly, and they've usually been at members' homes, except for those who can't host at their homes, and so would choose more public locations for the meetings. But now we're a little too large a group to easily meet in most homes. We've picked up about double our original number of members in the last couple years--a few of whom attend fairly regularly, some of whom come only in the summer (severe winter weather common here 6+ months of the year), and some of whom have come to 2 or 3 meetings then stopped for reasons unknown (but NOT because we cold-shouldered them--I'm death on that :) So we're trying to transition to a fixed location, but have to pay $15/month for the only one we've been able to find so far that's reasonably centrally located for the largish area we cover and would otherwise meet our needs (most places were a lot more expensive). We'll be trying that room out this month. We're too big for members' homes; we're too small in numbers to be able to charge the dues needed to pay for two monthly meetings at this room. In addition, it's getting harder to communicate with everyone who didn't attend what was discussed at a meeting--for example, whether to participate in a fiber exchange offered by another group--when many either don't have email or don't check it regularly. One of the latter, a relatively new person who has only attended 4 meetings out of the last 6 months (11 meetings in that time frame), was apparently offended that she wasn't included in the exchange discussion, which took place at two meetings she missed. Anyone else dealt with either of these two issues? I'd like to have some ideas to take to the next meeting to kick around :) Holly [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
