[Businessmtg] ASP membership requirements for volunteering as a Greeter

[Anne O.]

Good Morning Friends,

 

I am Anne O. ASP's Greeter Chair.  I have been a member of ASP for many
years, I joined in the early 2000's.  This online meeting has been a life
line for me like it has been for many others.   

 

Some background info on the Greeter role to consider as we discuss reducing
the requirements to serve in this position.

 

I became Greeter Chair in March 2018.  I am responsible for recruiting and
training Greeter volunteers.  The greeters and I share access to the 'New
Member Request' inbox.  We review each request for 3rd Tradition
qualifications before sending those requests through to be subscribed.  The
Greeters take turns managing the requests and will respond to the
individual, subscribe them and then welcome them to the group.  The greeter
is also available to answer individual questions and support troubleshooting
as needed.  Each member subscription process is two step, the greeter sends
an email to the server and then the Greeter Chair has to approve it before
anyone becomes a member.  The Greeter does NOT have access to the member
database, and the two step process offers a set of checks and balances which
is good for everyone.

 

Recruiting hasn't been easy.  Most recently I started recruiting for the 5/1
Greeter rotation and although several people stepped forward, they hadn't
been with us for a year yet.  So on May 1, we had one new greeter, and two
others who had already served 12 months stayed on.  Then in May we got one
more volunteer who qualified.  We are still short new recruits, Kim has
stayed on in the role (thankfully!), she has been a greeter since 5/1/2018.
If I could have accepted 6 month membership, we would have been able to fill
the positions, I had about a half dozen inquiries from members who hadn't
yet been with us for a year.  Based on comments from those who have shown
interest in the role, I can only hypothesize that newer members have more
recent memories of where they were in their Al-Anon journey when they went
through the process to become members of ASP.  Those memories may be driving
the stronger desire to volunteer as greeter.

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I propose that we discuss reducing the membership requirement for ASP
Greeters from 12 months participation with ASP to 6 months.  In my humble
opinion, I do NOT think we should reduce that requirement further to say 3
months, even if the volunteer has Al-Anon experience.  In my opinion, one
needs to understand how the online ASP meeting works before taking on the
Greeter role.  Newcomers to ASP should first get a sense of the online
meeting flow before taking on the Greeter process.  In my experience, during
my year and a half as Greeter Chair, the Greeter flow can be tricky and for
some it has been overwhelming.  There is a lot of file management and
coordination of communication between Greeters, Greeter Chair and
prospective new members.   Additionally, many of the questions that come in
to the Greeter are tied to the mechanics of the online meeting.  How to
share, how to change email address, etc.

 

That's all I have for now!  Looking forward to hearing from others on this
topic.

 

Hugs, 

 

Anne O.