First, we had a president, J, who was SUPER INTO BEING INVOLVED. But not just involved, involved in things like blood donations. Which she does once a month because she considers it Her Duty. There were other things, like handing out candy to kids, where she opted to let other people do it.

She arranged a meeting in December at the same time as various illnesses hit our local area HARD. I told her ahead of time I had to work, but apparently everyone else was S I C K. They told her beforehand. There were maybe two people at the meeting.

January, she cancels the meeting with no explanation. February, I see the date is coming up and email her to let her know that the space we usually use won't be available. I never hear back.

When I say never? I mean never. February, March, April, no acknowledgement. Turns out she ran for office. I only knew because her name was on the sample ballot.

Here's another fun thing - she told me that, as secretary, I was responsible for social media and did I want her to keep doing it because she already had everything and she noticed I wasn't doing anything. She never gave me the passwords. Not even after I pointed that out and said I was really busy but would still love to help out.

So a couple months ago the group's remnants got together and decided to plod along. J is dead to us, long live the vice-pres. The Vice-Pres sends out an email about what dates are good. We agree on a date, but one person asks for it to be postponed because she's out of town. No one responds.

Instead, I get a text asking about the address so Vice can have a friend send out Facebook blasts, all he needs is the address. I send it to him, thinking he must have working things out with out-of-towner C in private emails or texts or something.

No email blast goes out. No Facebook blast. Nothing.

I finally dig up the original email thread and say that I'm fine with it moving to a later date. STILL. No one responds. I finally send Vice a text about it. He tells me that's fine, and can I send out an email to the active members to let them know.

There are four active members.

I send out the message. He thanks me. (FOUR ACTIVE MEMBERS)

Today, he sends out a text asking if anyone has an agenda. We do not. Because he's supposed to? And I realize I'm gonna have to brush up on our rules and stuff. Some of which I download right off the bat.

But along the way, I find our roster list. HOOO BOOY. WE DO NOT HAVE FOUR ACTIVE MEMBERS.

Holy crap. The roster lists 24. And I know some of these people are active. I'm almost certain this list was done up by our treasurer. You know what it doesn't have? CAPITALIZATION. I know. I probably shouldn't get caught up on that. But.

He didn't capitalize some people's names all the way through? Like, it's obviously that he just got lazy. He didn't spell out city names. He didn't even bother alphabetizing toward the end.

Our former pres didn't get elected, btw. Apparently, she put as much thought into her campaign as she did into us.

I... might have to take over.

I don't want to take over. I do not have the time, I don't want to deal with the people. But this shit is a mess and it's too important. I've talked to so many people who want to meet like-minded people and feel like there's nowhere to go.

And our former pres's idea of getting people involved was to have them 1) give blood, 2) meet at bars to drink and donate (not all members are 21, nor do they drink), or 3) door-to-door campaigns. And she expected EVERYONE to do this, because SHE was willing to 1) give blood, 2) drink and donate some money to do so, and 3) knock on doors.

But the thing is, that's throwing people into the fire without showing them the kitchen. Slow down. Let them feel like they WANT to be there. THEN throw them into the fire.

So hopefully I can push other people to do this stuff? But I think all of us are holding office in this group because there was no one else to do so. We only had seven people attend election night. No one even had to give a speech. There was one contested election, because Treasurer wanted to hedge his bets.

I'm just... going through the documents and... she never gave anyone the social media passwords.

We have to rebuild this group.

I get that she was probably discouraged because no one wanted to do the blood drive and she never told anyone about her drink fundraiser dates and pushed us to do stuff out of town that cost money (WE ARE POOR) but damn. Bad ideas.

Okay. So the meeting was four people plus the presenter. We decided it would be an informal meeting. I've already sent out notes with options for executive meeting time, date, place. And regular meeting options. And things we need to have on the agenda.

My mixers idea worked out really well, and the other two people on the exec committee and another person there were excited about them.

It turns out C and Treasurer saw J in person, but she started avoiding them as soon as she saw them, and she's apparently kept a LOT of stuff from us. State meetings, meet-ups, passwords, banking info, all that.

wow that's a mess

Such a mess. It occurred to me that the past president might have everything we need, unless J changed some settings, so I've asked if anyone has talked to the past president. At least the four of us are dedicated enough that we want to get everything off the ground again.