Our Annual Holiday Dinner Dance Gala on December 7th at the Vineyards Country Club was a great success and everyone had a wonderful and fun filled time of celebrating the holiday season and building bridges of friendship.
Our December Luncheon Program featured Mr. Tarik Ayasun, giving an outstanding presentation on Turkey as an emerging power and player. I am sure everyone walked away from the meeting with a much better understanding of Turkey, its pivotal role in the region, the dynamics of the Middle East and the great challenges we are facing in that part of the world.
We are looking forward to a great 20th year for our club. Outstanding speakers highlight our monthly luncheon programs and our social, cultural, educational and nature programs feature a great diversity of exciting and interesting programs.
Our 20th Anniversary Celebration with Cocktails and Conversation will be held on March 22nd at the Vineyards C.C., so please reserve that date on your calendar. We are inviting our Charter Members and families and a number of prominent local citizens to attend this celebratory gala event.
Your Board of Directors strategic focus for the coming year will be in three areas:
1. Membership - we want to continue to increase the membership experience of our existing members in all our club's activities by maintaining the camaraderie, connectedness, and friendly atmosphere at all our functions and to encourage greater participation in them. To ensure this we are capping our membership level at 200 members and establishing a waiting list for new applicants. We are also reexamining our criteria for membership, role of sponsors, new member reception, orientation, and making new members feel welcome.
2. Communications and Marketing - our 20th Anniversary celebration during 2013 provides great opportunities to publicize our club in the communities as one of the premier venues in South West Florida and to achieve greater publicity of our varied activities and functions..
3. Governance - the increased size of our organization and its great array of outstanding offerings to our members requires a complete review of our management structures and policies with respect to Board membership, committee structures and staffing, and data management, so as to ensure continued outstanding service delivery to our membership.
We will keep you apprised of our progress in the above mentioned areas and hope we can count on your advice and assistance.
Our monthly luncheons have been well attended and we appreciate that about 90 percent of our members avail themselves of our on-line registration and payment procedure using our very secure PayPal credit card processing system. This greatly facilitates processing the registrations and payments and ensures good coordination with the Vineyards service staff for our lunches. Please continue to help us by having your registrations and payments to us by Wednesday prior to the Luncheons and make sure to let us know if you would prefer a Fruit of Vegetable Plate instead of the advertised entrée.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Henry Pfendt
President
TIP OF THE MONTH
