Summary of our Brainstorming Session

Brainstorming session 1/12/2012

The club devoted some time to looking at our statement of purpose and what we want for the future of our club. We broke up into small groups and discussed some questions, brainstorming ideas.

We looked closely at the four points of our mission

• to stimulate the knowledge and love of indoor and outdoor gardening,
• to encourage civic planting and beautification,
• to help people of all ages learn the satisfaction of gardening and other horticultural pursuits,
• and to enjoy the gardens and friendships while sharing knowledge among our members.

Some thought that we do the forth and first items very well but might do more to encourage civic planting and to reach out to the community.

Discussions in both groups:

We thought that joining the Chamber of Commerce would help us with outreach (ads in the Chamber newsletter and networking). Also, word of mouth from members could help us promote meetings and events. We could also use Community Education to promote garden tours such as Arboretum, Munsinger Gardens, etc.

We could partner with the Chamber to encouraging civic planting and beautification: put together a planting day event for the businesses in Grantsburg. The Chamber would provide plants and we would help businesses get their planters planted coordinating with the hanging plant pots. The businesses would be responsible for watering and weeding.

Issues around encouraging member to serve as officers came down to time constraints. Offering premiums for members who serve was not thought to be very useful.

Some thought we should not offer a Master Gardener Scholarship program. Others thought that offering a Master Gardener Scholarship was a good idea but we need first to work on our ability to set up a budget so that we know what funds will be available for a scholarship. Partial scholarship rather than a full scholarship was thought to be a better idea—somewhere between $25.00 and $75.00 (cost last year for the course was $150.00. Details of how the scholarship would work would have to be worked out.

If we want to sponsor more programs such as the scholarship and additional advertising of meetings and speakers we may need to raise more money. Ideas for raising more money: silent auction as a Chamber event, weeding for hire (difficult when we have our own gardens to weed), plant sale gift certificates sold before the sale date, make crafts such as stepping stones, twig trellises, rhubarb leaf birdbaths. We could do a workshop day to make times to sell. Club supplies materials, members supply labor. Sell them at plant sale, through booths at fairs such as Experience North Woods Christmas in Siren or Chamber events. We could sell food items.

The question remains, are we satisfied with our club as it is or do we want to do more? If there is more we want to do, we will need to commit to the time and energy it will take to do more. For now we could do two things that will not involve a lot of additional time or effort for most members:

1. $50.00 to join the Chamber is easily accomplished. We can join for one year to see if we like it.

2. The first year we could advertise our monthly meetings and sales in the newsletter and participate in some Chamber events as they come up. Not a lot of extra time or energy needed. Needs a vote.

3. We can ask Mary to work up a budget for the year 2012 with normally expected expenditures and revenue and decide if we’d like to devote a few hundred dollars to a trial scholarship/grant program for members who want to take the Master Gardener course through Wisconsin Extension. Details need to be worked out but we’d want to vote on this.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Thanks to Lucille and Kris for a look at our history. Thanks to Nicki Peterson for talking to us about the Grantsburg Chamber.