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P.O. Box 160223 Nashville, Tn 37216-0223 615 262-1119 - Office
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October, 2002 Ever wonder why the State Wide Poker Run doesn’t exist anymore? How about the Spring Swap Meet? Ever get frustrated with a screw up on your membership – the card isn’t right or you aren’t getting your newsletter? Ever ask yourself why the ‘state’ isn’t getting further with the helmet modification bill? Ever ask, “What are those people doing?” Guess what. ‘You’ are ‘those people’. Every now and then it is important to take a look at CMT/ABATE and remember what it is, how it is structured and how it works. This is pretty straightforward. You go to your charter meetings, send in your membership, read the newsletter, attended most charter events and feel good about the occasional check your charter can write to a local charity. Great. All of that is important. It works because of you. But, more importantly it is essential to understand why sometimes it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work when all efforts to achieve anything from Membership to Activities to Legislative goals rest with few people. In other words, it also doesn’t work because members aren’t involved. I know that life is busy and important things come up. Believe me, ask my friends what monumental battle I dealing with now that makes the challenges at CMT/ABATE seem like a walk in the park. I know that many long time charter officers deal with many difficult things in their lives. This takes time – not a lot – but it does take some. Yet somehow, time can be found for things we deem important – family, friends, organizations, hobbies, motorcycle rides, and other interests. I also understand that not everyone is going to be totally immersed in everything they have an interest in. Sometimes it will be a casual interest. I have a few of those in my life. I pay dues and read the magazines but do little else. However, I do have my own priorities – God, family, country – in that order. The first two, I’ve got covered, - well mostly. But for the last, I see a real struggle in this country right now over our future and I honestly believe that involvement with CMT/ABATE is a good way to express commitment to the true principles this country was founded on. In my mind those are of freedom and liberty from a controlling and over bearing government and the opportunity to pursue what I want to pursue. To paraphrase a famous quote, I love my country but I fear my government. Our organization deals with personal freedoms and basic rights. So to me, involvement with CMT/ABATE was a natural. Right now, our organization has several challenges and opportunities. We have open positions for Legislative Chairman, Public Relations Chairman, Motorcycle Rights Foundation (MRF) Representative, Treasurer and Webmaster. Additionally, as you will read about in this newsletter we approved the creation of six standing committees to help distribute the load to achieve our corporate goals. These are: Activities, Membership, Safety and Education, Products, Public Relations and Fiscal Oversight. Legislative efforts will still be handled by the chairman and charter legislative officers. We now have 15 charters. Five of these committees (one is filled with existing officers) must be filled by people stepping up from the charters ready to help – just a little. And all we need is one person from each charter in order to have a committee of four in each area – the chairman and three charter volunteers. It is our intent to represent every area of the state – east, middle and west - in each committee and rotate the committees every two years. So, if Harpeth River has a person on Membership, in two years the charter will be on a different committee. Wonder what these committees are to do? Please see the summary printed elsewhere in the paper. These responsibilities are to be defined and refined by the committees themselves as their first order of business. But, these committees are very important to our growth. You can’t expect our Products Chairman to be able to create pre-order sales, organize efforts with every charter and their activities, supply expertise to charters on producing their own products, coordinate product sales at charter and state events across the state, keep ‘the books’ for the Products area, find suppliers, come up with new ideas, investigate what other states are doing with Products, create a budget for Products, coordinate the sale of products in the newsletter and the website and ship orders all by themselves. But, that’s what we are asking a Products Chairman to do right now. However, with a little help of a couple of people who could make a couple of calls, or keep up with inventory, or ship some products out, or come up with new product ideas, or man a booth at an event we could go a long way to making a real impact. I realize that we have some struggling charters. Many people reading this right now are members of those charters and haven’t been to a meeting in many months. Many charter meetings could be held in a phone booth. People have asked me, “They can’t get people to their own meetings and events. How do you expect them to come up with one person to be on a committee?” My answer is through dedication, hard work, a little luck and the energy that comes when people see growth, success and results. We may not get every committee filled by volunteers right away but as people see better products, more statewide activities or results from efforts by those involved in Safety and Education and see that it is coming from these committees it will create a snowball effect. I have faith and I know the type of people we have in this organization. So, that’s the game plan. We need volunteers to fill these committees. It is on a first come, first serve basis. Talk to your charter director or call the office to express interest or ask questions. We need you (Picture Uncle Sam pointing his finger at you.)! Additionally, because of the lack of some of these statewide events and a number of other reasons, the state office is currently unable to meet its modest bills. We only get funds through state activities, membership and the split on charter events. Things have been slow. A lot of charter events haven’t been held this year either. I am asking every charter to consider the state office its number one charity. It was requested at the BOD meeting that each charter donate 10% of their funds in order to help the entire organization through these lean times. If we don’t stick together there won’t be any of these legislative efforts we are all fighting for. Keep the faith. Until later, just ride… Steve |
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