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Hi <<First Name>>,

As a new year approaches I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your support of our Middle Tennessee chapter of Wild Ones. Reflecting over the past year, I'm happy to report that our membership grew more than 60% in 2022 to around 155. We also resumed many of our outdoor activities including plant ID hikes, a picnic social, table events at festivals, and we continued our volunteer native plant gardening and semi-annual native plant sales. I also want to thank everyone who participated in a tremendous volunteer support effort, particularly at the plant sales, but also for the table events and the native gardening activities.

Here is a list of our current 2022 Board of Directors:

President, Richard Hitt
Vice President, Donnie Bryan
Secretary, Brian Hendrix
Treasurer, Patty Petrous
Membership Chair, Alicia Allen
Member-at-large, Paul Prill

Moving forward, our chapter will need to approve a new set of board members (per national bylaws).

Brian Hendrix will be rotating off the board at the end of 2022. Brian is our founding secretary and also gave the presentation at our first monthly meeting on October 16, 2018. Brian also gave two other presentations at monthly meetings. I thank Brian for his work helping get our chapter off to a good start.

The remaining board members are willing to return as needed. In order to keep this letter short, if that's still possible, I have included a list of current positions as well as needed positions (in red and underlined) in an addendum below this letter. Please look over our chapter's needs and see if there is something that you are willing to help with. Once you have your list, please send it to our chapter email address wildonesmidtn@gmail.com. If you have questions about any of the positions just request a reply or call-back in your email. We welcome self-nominations for any positions, even if currently occupied. If you would like to nominate someone else, please secure their willingness to serve first. Please reply by Thursday, December 29, with any nominations. The board will act as a nominating committee and present a recommended list to the full chapter for a vote in early January.

Our board meets monthly for about an hour. Board members do a variable amount of work outside of the meetings, depending on the workload of their positions. Other than secretary, any of the other available positions could be stand-alone ones that wouldn't require board membership.

Thanks again for being a member of our Wild Ones chapter. I wish you a very joyous holiday season.

Richard Hitt, President
Wild Ones Middle Tennessee Chapter

Addendum: Position Descriptions

President: The president is responsible for overseeing all chapter activities to ensure they are in keeping with the national mission. The president is responsible for completing the State of the Chapter Report and submitting it to the national office by the deadline.

Vice President: The vice president assists the president as necessary, performs other assigned tasks, and assumes the president's duties when necessary.

Secretary: The secretary is responsible for maintaining the records of chapter business, including the board meeting minutes.

Treasurer: The treasurer is the financial officer of the chapter. The treasurer is responsible for presenting a financial report at each board meeting, providing a yearly budget, collecting and dispersing money as needed. The treasurer is responsible for completing the End of Year Chapter Financial Report and submitting it to the national office by the deadline.

Membership Chair: The membership chair provides a membership report regularly to the board and encourages chapter growth with the assistance of all board members. The membership chair keeps the MailChimp distribution list in sync with the national membership database.

Program Chair: The program chair is responsible for program planning for monthly meetings. Often, this is securing a speaker for a presentation. This is usually a board position.

Webmaster: The webmaster manages the chapter's Wordpress webpage.

Plant Rescue Chair: This chair is responsible for finding and managing opportunities to rescue native plants from future construction sites, and other sites where the land/home owner wants plants removed for whatever reason.

Newsletter Editor: The newsletter is in charge of producing a regular newsletter (currently using MailChimp) with copy input from several chapter sources.

Social Media Chair: This chair is responsible for managing the social media presence of the chapter. This position could be divided among different members, as needed.

Other Positions: Graphic arts (for posters and brochures), videography (processing meeting videos for the chapter YouTube channel), chapter photographer, grants chair, etc., are all services the chapter could use. If you have interests not already covered above, let us know what you think you can help with based on your skills and talents!