Re: new iris society(long)

From: Wjobe@aol.com

Dave,
I'll tell you what I did to get ours started.
First: we decided on an organizational meeting date about one month in
advance.  Next I called Shirley Pope,the AIS affiliates chairperson.
She sent me the affiliate application papers.  I also notified the region 7
RVP of our intentions.  Then two weeks before the meeting I made up
flyers with the meeting info on them and put them out around town.
Nurseries, restraunts, Wal-Mart, grocery stores etc.  Ten days before
the meeting, I went to the  newspaper and made arrangements to have
the info in the Sunday before and the day of the meeting ( ours was on a 
Tuesday)  The week before, I also gave a program on iris to a local
garden club. ( I took a large vase of iris blooms to their meeting)
I also took a vase of bloom stalks to our water garden society meeting
the Thursday before.  Walking around with an arm load of bloomstalks
sure helps advertise !!!
If you do not get 100% AIS membership with the new members, then you
must have 50% AIS or pay a $50 fee to be affiliated.  All of your officers
must be AIS members.  
With your affiliate application papers from AIS you will get a lot of helpful
information on preplanning and organizing the society.
It really is easy, just a lot of footwork to start out.
Now I will tell you what we did to encourage AIS membership.
Of course, most of our group were new to iris and AIS in general.
We had copies of the last four AIS Bulletins and our last two Regional
bulletins to show them.  We explained that there is a world of information
in the AIS bulletins on growing iris, and what iris people have seen on
tours that they liked and even articles on floral arrangements with iris.  We 
told them there were pictures of the very newest
irises being introduced ( we showed them the colored pictures)  WE
also showed them the vast directory  of growers in the back , where
they could send for catalogs they would enjoy.  We also told them
you can learn a lot just reading catalogs.  Then we showed them the
Regional bulletins and explained that only the members registered with
AIS got them because the region gets their mailing list from AIS. 
We explained that a  club member who is not an AIS member is only going
to be half informed  because there is so much to gain from becoming
an AIS member.  Everyone seemed to agree that the six pulications were 
certainly worth the $18 or $23.

We also talked about the other sections. I made a poster listing the joining
fees of AIS and all of the sections.  The group thought that as soon as we 
have some money in our treasury , the club would join all of the sections
and create a library. The members could read the bulletins from the
sections and then decide which ones they personally would join.
We had 20 different rebloomers blooming the day of the meeting , so
needless to say, they all want to join the reblooming section.  I also had 
the publications from the sections we belong to as well as some of the 
catalogs put out by some of the growers who advertise in the AIS bulletin on 
display. Everyone poured over all of the stuff and were getting excited about 
getting their own "librarys" started.
We also told them  about regional activities and we hope to get them involved 
in those things, too.   We told them "you miss out on a lot of the benefits 
of belonging to an iris society, if you don't get involved with the
regional doings"  We know ourselves that we really look forward to the 
regional meetings.  We enjoy the people so much. And we always have a lot of 
fun!!
Hope this helps!

Leslie Jobe'
In KY, where it is getting cooler. We still have 
about 29 clumps of rebloomers getting read
to burst forth with a lot of color!!

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