Open Your Toolbos

by Dave “Twit” Linberg

As I start to button up my house for the winter, I find myself going back and forth to my toolbox. I thought back to January and Chubby’s newsletter article about using your toolbox. It occurred to me then that we all have “toolboxes” that we go to in our everyday lives. The toolboxes I refer to are our life experiences. Some of mine come from school and learning how to read, write and do arithmetic (math for those of you who don’t understand the term arithmetic). Some of them come from observation of what to do and what not to do and some come from the school of hard knocks or trial and error. I have been your membership director for a lot of years now. We have tried several different methods throughout those years to keep our members engaged and active. Not all of them worked and some have had great success.

One item we have in our toolbox is our very successful program of card collection. This program encourages new members to attend four different meetings or events and collect “cards” from the regional reps conducting those meetings or events that they are attending. New members and second year members are eligible for this program and should send four of these cards from four different meetings or events to me at the state office and ABATE will give them a one-year renewal for free. These new members get a chance to see firsthand what our meetings and organization is all about, hopefully have some fun along the way and as I said they get a one-year bonus renewal for doing so. I always promoted the fact that once a new member has signed up, we need to mentor them and show them the ropes. This card collection program does just that by having new members test-drive the organization by attending meetings, finding out what we do and learning about the many high-quality programs that ABATE of WI has to offer. This program will be continuing in 2020.

Another item in our toolbox is the telephone, cell phone or email system. If you are out motorcycling or going to regional or statewide events, call or email another member and have them tag along. Our organization stays strong because we support each other. It gives us the opportunity to brainstorm ideas and ask questions on a one-on-one basis. I can’t tell you the amount of information – some of which I could never pass on here – I have gotten from conversations held over a burger or a beer going to or from a meeting or event, and have had a lot of laughs too in doing so. Certainly, if we had been in charge, we would have been able to solve the world’s problems during these more intimate conversations.

Every few months I give regional reps a list of members that have expired memberships. This is a great tool for all of us to use. If you know of anyone on these lists, please take the time to reach out and invite them back into the fold. Or use it as a learning experience that you can bring back to the table to find out where we need to improve as an organization. Ask them why they have let their membership lapse. It might have been an oversight, or they might have a legitimate reason that we can work on to improve. They were members once, so what happened? Let’s find out and solve any issues so those that have expired will re-join. We know from experience that there is power in numbers and our legislators on both the statewide and national level pay better attention to us if we have the numbers to back us up.

I hope you were able to go to the Meeting of the Minds in Bloomington, MN last month and hear first-hand what the Motorcycle Riders Foundation has been learning in Washington, DC. Even though I’ve been around forever, I always take away something new. Networking with other states that have the same motorcycling and membership retention issues that we do gives me fresh ideas.

So, we have many tools in our toolbox to help us get our job done. Let’s not forget to use it.

Twit