Making membership work

As senior vice commander for the Department of Georgia in 2013-2014, Legionnaire Randy Goodman saw where his department’s membership was. And for Goodman, it needed to improve.

“I got the coin as senior vice commander as membership chairman for No. 49 in the country,” Goodman said. “That wasn’t good enough for us. My goal was to be No. 1. But we couldn’t just want that. We had to do the things that were necessary.”

As department commander in 2014-2015, Goodman and his fellow Legionnaires did those necessary things, leading the department to No. 1 in the Legion in membership among contiguous Legion departments. Meanwhile, the Department of Florida finished right behind Georgia in membership under immediate Past Department Commander Jay Conti’s guidance.

Their secrets to success? Among other things, it was teamwork, communication, working Legion programs and making sure Legionnaires all the way down to the post level understood how to tell the Legion story.

Capitalizing on Momentum

Goodman said that when then-National Commander Dan Dellinger asked for the resignation of Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki in May of 2014, it “sparked something in Georgia. The American Legion was now THE veterans organization to take care of veterans. I wanted to capitalize on that.”

After taking office later in the summer, Goodman said he focused on what incoming National Commander Mike Helm called “the four Rs” – recruitment, retention, revitalization and reconnect. In his first column in the department’s monthly newspaper, Goodman urged every Legionnaire in the state to “ask your (post) commander how you can help.” He urged members to donate their time to help their posts with one of Helms’ four Rs.

“That happened,” Goodman said. “We did 11 out of 12 (district revitalizations). That, in itself, got 30, 40 people per district involved in The American Legion process. That’s over 350 new people involved in our strategies. We were able to capitalize on that because we had more people working and more people talking about The American Legion story.”

Those who helped with the revitalizations took what they learned and ran with it. “For one (Legionnaire Nathan Blair) in the Fifth District, that was his first time to get engaged like that,” Goodman said. “He left the revitalization and started recruiting more. He set up at Wal-Mart, at Target, and he became the No. 14 recruiter in the nation. And that was his first try at it.”

Communication was a key for Goodman – especially when it came to working with his district commanders. “They’re the ones who get the job done,” he said. “My interactions with the district commanders were somewhat daily – weekly, as a minimum – with all 12 district commanders. They have to really get my message to the rest of the district, and I want my message to be clear.”

Goodman said the majority of his district commanders also utilized MyLegion.org to monitor what was happening at the post level. The result: Six out of 12 Georgia districts hit 100 percent or higher of their membership goal, Goodman said. Four of those 12 competed for the Legion’s national “Race to the Top” competition, which honors district commanders who attain at least 100 percent of the district’s assigned membership objective by March 31.

“We got our goal out there, and the district commanders made it happen,” Goodman said.

Goodman also stressed understanding the Legion’s programs work. “Every entity of our organization is focused on the same Four Pillars and the programs that support them,” he said. “So get to know those Four Pillars and learn to understand the underlying programs that make those pillars grow.”

Know Your Legion

Conti focused on educating Legionnaires at the beginning of his year as department commander. “We went out and trained everybody how to be a Legionnaire, how to be a commander of a post, how to be an adjutant of a post,” he said. “It trickled down from there.”

Conti had developed a post officer training books for commanders, finance officers, sergeants-at-arms, historians, judge advocates and Legion Riders. “It was a small book they could slide right into their cap bag and take with them the main topics they would need to do their job,” he said. “That went over great.”

The department also provided month-to-month guidance on how a post should conduct its membership program. “Depending on the size of that post, they did what they could do that month,” Conti said. “If something didn’t work in their post, they didn’t do that, or they might have carried it over to a different month. In essence … it created competition between a lot of the different posts within the districts and within our department. Three of our districts won (the) Race to the Top.”

Posts were established on Florida college campuses while Conti was in office. A very specific strategy was used to do so.

“Every college has a GI Bill coordinator,” Conti said. “That’s the person you really need to go to and sell. I don’t recommend going to big universities … because those are people who are coming from out of state, and then they’re going to be leaving and going back out of a state. At community colleges, those young men and women are going to be staying right there in that community (and) trying to get a job. Very few of them are going to be leaving.

“You need a great service officer and a good sister post to show them what the (Legion) programs are, help them to fund raise (and) help them to give back to the community. The service officer is what sells membership. Getting (veterans) the benefits they so deserve is going to sell membership, and it sold membership in a few posts we did open up in Florida at community colleges. If you show (college officials) that you care about the veterans going to school there, and their families, then they will open up the doors for you.”

Getting young veterans, and even active-duty military, to join was a big key in Conti’s eyes, but first the Legion had to show those potential members what the Legion had to offer. “They’re the future,” he said. “I’m 52 years old. I was one of them when I first got out after 21 years in the service. I felt The American Legion Department of Florida had to show them the ropes and give them a little guidance when they get out (of the military). There’s no text book on how to be a veteran.”

And, to keep things fun, Conti and the department created a series of membership videos that also pay homage to “The Godfather” that were a hit in the department. But Conti doesn’t want credit for his department’s successful year.

“It was never about me,” Conti said. “It was about the Legionnaires, the volunteers down at the deck-plate level doing the job – the best job they could do. And they did. I just gave them the advice, the tools and the encouragement. It wasn’t me. It was our Legionnaires and Legion family members in Florida that did it."