What has the Marin Branch of CWC meant to you? We’ve heard members tell us how wonderful it is to connect with so many writers who can share their expertise, humor and general companionship — writing can be such a solitary experience. Others have been thrilled at how much they’ve learned about the writing craft, publishing and literary marketing from talented presenters. If the Marin Branch has meant something to you, we need you to read on because we need your help. Whether you can contribute one or four hours a month (seriously, that’s all it takes to help us thrive), we are asking you to step up now.
Two years ago people stepped up to prevent us from losing our chapter. Since then, we’ve continued to grow by hosting compelling presentations that are attracting larger crowds and reaching out to the community through social media — and our membership is up from 25 to 44.
While today we are one of the smallest of the 22 California chapters, a decade ago, this was a totally happening scene. And it can be again. We have a lot of new members now, and we need new volunteers and new leaders to keep improving.
What’s the difference between leaders and volunteers? Well, we’re all volunteers, but some of us might sign up for one thing, like staffing the registration table for the meetings or bringing refreshments. (We’ll pay for them.)
And then there are the board members, who lead the organization, and, as appropriate, assign tasks to volunteers.
We need both, but especially leaders, because we can’t continue without them.
These volunteer and leadership roles are not generally time-consuming, but they are a responsibility. Collectively, we, the board, decide who the speakers are, deal with finances, promote the events, keep track of members and email lists, and so on. We’re like a small business, but very small, with no employees. Only volunteers.
We’re solvent — we have enough members and money in the bank to pay our expenses. What we’re lacking is in the people who will help us keep going.
Here are some of the roles we are seeking to fill:
- Treasurer — track income and expenses, and forward our share of the membership dollars to the state organization. If you can balance a checkbook, you can do this.
- Membership Chair — meet our members, track membership, promote new memberships and renewals.
- Webmaster — update the website with new events, blog posts.
- Social Media Maven — post events and other items of interest on Facebook, Meetup, NextDoor, and elsewhere.
- Writers — write posts for the website and/or Facebook. (For example, we’d love for someone to do an interview with David Corbett to help promote his event.)
- President — chair the member meetings and board meetings, and serve as the public face of the organization. Other duties as required, such as attending regional meetings.
- Program Chair — recruit speakers for meetings.
We will train you, and be there to answer questions.
We look forward to hearing from you. Contact us at marincwc@gmail.com.
Thank you.
— Mike Van Horn (president), Mary Krefting (treasurer and program chair), Diane Vickers (membership chair), Jett Walker (secretary), John Byrne Barry (webmaster), Allison Marshall (at-large board member)
