The health of a post

West Palm Beach, FL

I read about the Buddy Check program in a copy of my Legion magazine and said to myself, “Our post should do that.” I brought up the idea at one of our post meetings and it was unanimously approved. Then I said, “Great, what do I do now?” I did a search of the Legion website and found the Buddy Check Toolkit. It provided me a clear and concise approach to getting a Buddy Check program accomplished. I asked my adjutant for a list of our members and made a database of phone numbers from that. Once I started calling our members, I soon found out that it was quite time-consuming for one person. I solicited help from our post members and put together a team of eager volunteers. Using the Buddy Check script, we called our members.
Our response from the contacts we made was overwhelming. Many were ecstatic to hear from us. Nobody was unreceptive. Most were glad that we made an effort to call them. The feedback from the post team members was a sense of accomplishment and pride in a job well done. Not only did we get an idea of the health and needs of our membership, we also were able to clear up discrepancies in our membership roster. Some of our members passed away, others moved out of state. There were also some bad phone numbers or disconnected telephones. We left a lot of voice mails. I think this may have had to do with caller ID and the fact that the number being called from was not recognized.
Overall, the mission was accomplished. Not only did we get a gauge of our post’s health, but we were also able to get a more precise snapshot of our post member database. We did get quite a few renewals and members saying they would try to stop by the post more often.
It was a great experience, and we plan on making a regular effort in the future.

Ron Rising, Ph.D.
Post Service Officer
Post 141, West Palm Beach, Fla.

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