President Bruce Blodgett’s Message

Feliz Navidad Division #5 members! I sincerely hope you all had a wonderful Christmas vacation. Now, we look towards the end of 2011 with both excitement and disappointment. Excitement at the overall success of AFSA as a whole because we are working towards meeting our goal of 22,000 new members this year for our overall organization! This is HUGE. It means, if we actually are able to get about 280 more members before the end of the year, we will end the year with MORE members than we started. Now the disappointing part – - Division 5 could have been a stronger advocate of that recruiting and retention effort.

However, we did have some very positive trends in the Division. Chapter #F0567, Hurlburt Field, was very active in their R&R efforts this year, in part due to the leadership of their President and their Executive Council. Individually, we had folks step up their recruiting and retention, but it doesn’t look like anyone will meet the threshold for 100 recruits and or retentions. We can all take these lessons to heart as we begin a new year, a year of hope that we can bring our Division numbers back up to where they belong. We have struggled to keep 8K overall members, when we should realistically be upwards of 9-10K members easily for our demographic area.

We can put this Division BACK on the map before our merge into Division #2 in 2013; but, this takes everyone’s dedication to recruit and retain. Your Chapter President cannot do it alone; he or she needs a core group/committee of folks who understand that to maintain the benefits and privileges that come with defending the freedom of this country, we must stand together, united, in one voice and let Congress know we will NOT go down without a fight – without them knowing that we ALL stand together to be heard! I am excited about 2012 – we wipe clean the chalkboard and start fresh! Let’s go get ‘em!

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Division 5 Jan – Mar 2012 Newsletter