After seventeen years on the Camden Alumni Association Board of Directors, serving the past five years as Registrar, including the current term, I am looking to prepare for a reduction in my role and duties on the Board of Directors. I have served for twelve years as a Membership Director before moving up to Registrar with the sudden resignation of Scott Souva due to health and work concerns in 2017.
And with this addition of the duties of being the Registrar, the things I had been doing for the Camden Alumni Association as a Membership Director still remained within my domain, mostly because of my own doing, I will admit. So, since the Registrar duties are the easiest for me to pass on to another, that is what I am thinking I need to do.
It is time for me to think towards the future and find someone to train to take on the role of Registrar for either the 2022-2023 term or for the 2023-2024 term at the latest. The plan ahead is to find a qualified alumni volunteer to step up to the role of one of the three Membership Directors, where we currently have a vacancy, and from that point, work with me, learning the ins and outs of how we process all the alumni data, dues payments, scholarship donations and banquet reservations.
After one year, my hope is that we can then switch roles, my protégé will become the Registrar and I will once again return to the position of Membership Director for at minimum one more term, whatever number of years are remaining of the three year term I will occupy.
The duties of the Registrar consist of:
- Carrying out tasks assigned by the Board or the President.
- Maintaining an up-to-date record of all active and inactive members of the Association, including:
- Requesting a list of recent graduates with contact information from the High School Guidance Office every August.
- Tracking local obituaries and death notices received from other alumni and making note of deaths in the database records.
- Performing the registration tasks for the Association Annual Meeting and Banquet and maintain a record of donations to the Alumni Scholarship Fund by:
- Processing all incoming mailed and online dues and scholarship donations.
- Preparing monthly or semi-monthly deposits for the Treasurer.
- Assisting the 1st Vice President in the process of organizing and conducting the Annual Meeting and Banquet.
- Work on increasing active membership in the Association, in cooperation with the 2nd Vice President and Membership Directors.
From Mid-April until the Annual Meeting & Banquet in Mid-June is the busiest time for the Registrar, handling both postal mail and online dues, scholarship donations and banquet reservations. You can expect to process anywhere from 15 to 50 payments a week, and if you do it on a weekly basis, plan on it taking several hours of your time each week. If you can handle them on a day by day basis, it might be 30-60 minutes a day depending on the daily volume…
The remainder of the year is much less busy, handling the occasional payment and reviewing obituaries. I get email updates from all the local funeral homes, and just look to see if anyone is listed as a Camden graduate, and update the database as necessary.
You do need to be comfortable working on computer databases, we use FileMaker Pro for maintaining our database and handling many of the forms and output needed for both the Banquet and contacting our alumni membership. Even if you have no experience with FileMaker Pro, but are comfortable working on a computer, the plan is for you to work with me until you are comfortable with the program yourself. As a Membership Director, I will also be accessing the FileMaker Pro database once positions are swapped, so I will still be there for assistance and questions…
The only requirements to be considered for the role of Registrar are:
-
- You are a Camden Graduate/Alumni.
- Are an active member, paying your $5 annual dues.
[You can pay your dues immediately to fulfill this requirement, if you are not up-to-date on your dues!]
- You live in the local Camden/Rome/Oneida area, so you can easily attend the 3-4 in person board meetings per year and deliver deposits to the Treasurer.
If you are interested, or know of another Camden Alumni who might be interested, in this opportunity to assist in the management of the Camden Alumni Association and are willing to commit to a few years working as the Registrar, please let us know.
Lance Williams, Registrar
Class of 1979
Camden Alumni Association
15 Selden Drive
Rome, New York 13440
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