Organizing your IPC Membership

If you’ve recruited several members into your IPC, you might want to start asking for volunteers, or organizing boards, committees and the such to help run the club. I can tell you, without a doubt, this is a hard task. In my experience, most folks want to participate in club functions, and then leave it at that. A small committed handful will volunteer to do more. It’s your task as the IPC organizer to think of ways that members can volunteer in a meaningful way.  It’s up to you to find the committed handful, and expand them into couple hands full.

Before you ask for help, know what you’re asking for first. It’s easy to get caught up in the operations of the club to see what can be done. But if you don’t have an idea of what you want help with, or want folks to do, you’ll confuse and scare away potential volunteers. If you’re running a monthly Salon or Casual Meet that has a good turn-out and very little moderation, those might be events you can turn over to a volunteer. You may even consider designing a volunteer board for sign-ups. This can be managed many ways. One way I’ve seen is to suggest an event and estimate the volunteers needed. Then tentatively post the date for the event with the stipulation that it needs the list volunteer spots to be filled before it becomes a scheduled event.

In running any group, a committee of the right people can go far to help the club grow. Volunteers can do things, but committees provide extra brain power. Please don’t confuse these committees with PTA, civic club, or other organization committees that are droll and boring, because they must operate under tight rules and regulations.  On the other hand, IPC committee is a brain trust that has an overriding interest in keeping the club’s programming fresh and vital. While the committee must conform to club by-laws, these shouldn’t be so constricting as to limit creativity.

 Since your IPC members have been interviewed or recommended, you already have a base of the ‘right’ people. When you have enough people, let’s say ten or more, consider forming a steering committee. This committee can serve as the brains of the IPC. You’ll need to serve as leader for a few meetings, but at some point, you may want to have the committee elect a new head on a yearly basis. This way, the IPC can function independently of one person. Eventually, the committee should be elected by the club’s membership with by-laws in place to guide the election process. I recommend keeping the committee small, no more than seven members for a larger IPC, and no more than 5 for a small (less than ten) to medium (11-50) -sized IPCs.

Don’t be one of those organizers that goes about organizing alone. You’ll burn out very quickly. Also, realize you’ll need to let got and allow the membership to make the IPC a living organization that doesn’t depend on you to keep it moving forward..