| So you want to start your own local Red Hat Society Chapter? |
| I am by no means an expert but I can tell you how I went about starting the Michiana Chapter of the Red Hat Society. You can glean what you like out of my experience and do what is most comfortable for you! The most important part is to enjoy & have fun! |
| OKay, first of all when I got this crazy idea into my head, I checked the official Red Hat Society website on the www and found the nearest chapters to be 30 miles north of me and 30 miles south of me. The one south of me had at least 50 members if not more. That's a little too large in my opinion to really bond with new girlfriends. So I spoke with my mom about the possiblity of starting a chapter of our own and spoke with others who might be interested. So, what you need to do is find someone anyone who wants to have fun like you do! It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 2 or 6 friends - anything is a start! Second thing is to decide WHERE you will have your first organizational meeting. Do you or any of your friends have a home large enough to accommodate 12 or 20 should that many show up? If not, look for free rooms to use in your community. Many businesses have rooms they loan to non-profit organizations. We found a room at our local library. Other suggestions might be the local bank or church. Now, pick a day and time and reserve the room. Allow 2 hours to have your 1st meeting. Make up flyers and post them where ladies will see them. Make sure all needed information is included along with your name and phone number and put R.S.V.P. so you can get an idea how many will be showing up! Suggestions for posting flyers are the bulliten boards at the local banks, library, grocery stores, consignment shop, laundramat. Ask for permission before posting. And pass them out to your friends and other ladies you have contact with! Now take that same flyer and maybe add more information about the Red Hat Society and type up several copies to hand to your area newspapers. Those are called Press Releases and include your name & phone number and email address, if you have one. Since I live within 30 minutes of IN and I live in MI, I decided to include all newspapers from the whole Michiana area. I emailed or snail mailed press releases to 7 different newspapers in Michigan and Indiana! Now....sit back & wait for the phone calls! YOU WILL GET THEM! |
| What we did at the 1st meeting I included in my press releases and that is to choose a name for our chapter. After everyone showed up (and some showed up in their Red Hats!), we introduced ourselves. Several of us already knew one another. We had 12 ladies for our first meeting, a nice size group! I also handed a sheet arround to gather everyone's name, address, email and phone. Then I proceeded to tell everyone the history of the Red Hat Society from the official website along with statistics of how many chapters were in our area. Now for the fun part, choosing our chapter name. First of all, I had copied several names of chapters from the official website to give the gals an idea of the sort of name chapters have chosen for themselves. I listed about 30 or more names. I then told them to put on their thinking caps and come up with something original! I passed papers out to everyone and had them write any suggestions down anonymously so as not to embarrass anyone. After the papers were passed to me, I wrote all the names on a dry erase board that was conveniently in the room. I listed about 20 names for everyone to see. The 2nd step was for everyone to chose their favorite and write that on a piece of paper. After I gathered those, I erased all except the 3 names with the highest votes. From that point, we voted one last time for our chapter name which ended up being PURPLE PEACOCKS! It was hard decision as we had many great & unique name suggestions. Now I have heard of some chapters beginning with a name already in place. This is because the Queen who started the chapter chose to do it this way. She wanted a particular name. I chose the way I did it because I wanted everyone to feel a part as it is OUR chapter , not MY chapter. I am just the instigator and designated Founding & Queen Mum! As Queen Mum, after your chapter has chosen a name, have an idea already in mind for the 1st official coming-out event. Tell everyone when & where and then ask them to tell their friends. After every meeting, I placed a announcement in the local papers about the details of the meeting and where we would be meeting the following month. At that point, I had gotten phone calls or emails almost every week asking me about the Red Hat Society. Some ladies were asking to start their own chapter and yet others wanted to join us! Before our 1st coming-out, I had gotten a phone call from one of the newspapers asking if a reporter could come and do an article and take pictures! After that article was in the paper 3 days later - WOW! I got even more phone calls. Be prepared for things to snowball! |
| The First Organizational Meeting |
| Please be sure to read the article below |