We Know The NAMI Goal

There is good news and there is bad news with respect to Lions membership. These numbers are very important to the success of the North American Membership Initiative (NAMI). Let’s delve into them.

Lions Club International (LCI) reported that District 30-M had 913 Lions on June 30, 2020. A year ago, the District had 1028 Lions. How did we lose over a hundred Lions in a year?

Our May 31, 2020 membership stood at 969 Lions. We lost about 60 Lions over an 11-month period. Why did we lose 56 in June?

Lions in state leadership positions knew about the financial situation of the Mississippi Lions Eye Bank (MLEB). The MLEB is the only certified eye bank in the state of Mississippi. We had to protect it.

At one point, Mississippi had more than 7000 Lions. Today that number is below 2000. The only way to keep the MLEB open was to increase membership dues. After much discussion, a dollar a month per Lion seemed the most logical. State leaders recognized a dues increase would adversely affect membership. That dues increase became effective on July 1st.

As a point of information, Lions membership stood at 1106 on June 30, 2018. It seems about 50-60 Lions left the association each year. Death caused some of the membership drops. It’s the membership drops of Lions with between two and seven years of service that causes the most concern. We will talk more about that next time.

With 913 District 30-M Lions, we now have the official NAMI starting point. We also have our District NAMI goal. By June 30, 2021, District 30-M must have at least 914 Lions on the roll. That would be a net membership increase. We don’t want to leave anything to chance.

It’s really hard to compute or forecast the final membership number in one year. That’s why we have set some intermediate goals. It’s why we set a high target. That’s what we’ll report in the future.

Each month District 30-M needs a membership increase of at least ten new Lions to insure we reach our NAMI goal. We want to make up for the 2019-2020 membership loss of 115 Lions. We can’t do that in one single month. Membership growth is a marathon, not a sprint.

About August 20th I will report the membership numbers for July 2020. If it’s good we can celebrate for a few minutes. That’s because we never finish the membership work. If the numbers are not good, then we have to examine the NAMI plan. We can’t adjust the NAMI goal.

We Serve because Kindness Matters 

Lion Andy Kalinowski (Andy K)
District Governor
662.549.3421
http://www.mississippilions.org/ 

https://www.facebook.com/Lions30M

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