Seamlines from the President-August 2022
I felt very privileged to represent our chapter at the National ASG Conference last week. It was so enlightening and lots of new ideas floating around in my head. The 2023 conference will be in New York City, July 6-10, 2023.Start planning for it.
I remember when I first enrolled in ASG I was very confused about how it was structured, who did what, and who people were. With so many new members, I thought I would recap how we are run.
The structure is - National - Chapter - Neighborhood or Specialty Groups. There are 10,513 members in ASG and 120 registered Chapters.
At ASG National there are three full time employees in Houston who keep the operation running. They create the online trainings, newsletters and notifications, enroll new members and answer questions. There is also a Board of Directors (volunteers) that give direction. They are the creative minds determining what trainings and events will be offered and are support for Chapter leaders. National provides a weekly on-line newsletter with trainings, ideas and news of chapters.
Next is Chapter level, (this is our Mpls-St Paul Chapter). We have 200 members presently with 13 Neighborhood Groups. Our Chapter is lead by 5 elected members (President, Vice President, 2nd Vice, Secretary, Treasurer and Chairs of special interests, (Media, Membership, Hospitality etc). This group is called Chapter Advisory Board or CAB. We meet once a month to set the direction for our chapter. Chapter members are always welcome to attend CAB meetings. See the website calendar for time and location.
As a Chapter we are working to change the model of our organization from CAB running everything to having members involved more. We are asking neighborhood groups to host an event or training, with the help of CAB, every few years for the whole chapter.
We want to build better relationships with our retail partners. We are asking assigned members to stop into shops in their neighborhood and talk to store employees about our group. We need to leave brochures should a customer express interest in a social sewing group. So far this has been very helpful in gaining new members.
How we communicate with our members has certainly evolved over the years .Our web page was completely revamped last year (thank you Brenda Oseland) to include all our activities and inform people as to who we are.
An internet platform called “Group Works” is our primary way to distribute recent information to our members. All members should have access to Groupworks to get the most current state of the chapter. If you have questions or never signed into Group Works contact Cindi Kelch at membership@asg-mpls-stpaul.org. We also have an internal Facebook group labeled “Mpls-St Paul ASG”. This Facebook page is ONLY open to our members and approval is need by us before accessing for the first time. All our members can post on this page and be confident only insiders can see or access.
There is also a public Facebook page called “American Sewing Guild Mpls-St Paul”(Yes just inverted.) Only assigned people can post on this page and is used to advertise recent activities to show members and general public what we do. You can post comments and hit “like” to these postings. And of course we have our quarterly Selvedge Newsletter, (Special thanks to Michelle Proulx). This newsletter is our core communications to all members. Following National ASG’s lead, and due to the high cost of printing and mailing, this was moved to electronic distribution a few years ago. An email is sent to all members stating it is ready for reading and it’s also posted on our Website. The email contains the password required for access.
