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August 2019 State Warden Report – 2019 Summer Meeting Survey Results Thank you to all who attended the 2019 Washington State Council Summer Meeting in Pasco, WA 19 – 21 July 2019. You made this a beneficial meeting for all attendees as evinced by comments made by 33 of the 189 participants, who returned the three-question survey at the end of the meeting. The questions were: What information did you expect to learn when you registered for the summer meeting? What information were you actually provided during the summer meeting? How can the Washington State Council improve your experience during future summer meetings?
Attendees at the summer meeting included 49 financial secretaries, 40 Grand Knights, 13 Deputy Grand Knights, 7 Council Program Chairmen, one Council Treasurer, and 8 various other Council officers and chairmen. There were 23 District Deputies at the summer meeting in addition to 6 Program Directors, 14 State Chairmen, 7 State Officers, 7 Past State Deputies, our Executive Director, 2 General Insurance Agents and 6 Field Agents. We had 4 Financial Secretary Trainers and one District Deputy Trainer provided by the Supreme Council.
The primary interests of Financial Secretaries were learning more about member management, member billing, issues related to Pennies for Heaven, Council planning and budgets, use of credit cards and clarification of Safe Environment requirements. The consensus of Financial Secretaries responding to the survey was that these topics were covered as was the process of on-line data entry. Several participants suggested that meeting rooms could have been cooler, that Council Treasurers would benefit from the training but that the interactive training and validation of financial processes training was excellent.
Grand Knights and Deputy Grand Knights were generally interested in information about Faith in Action and membership programs as well as contact information for State Program Directors and Chairmen. Other interests included on-line recruitment, availability of on-line training and more general information about Faith in Action and other Knights of Columbus activities, Washington State Council expectations for, as well as duties and responsibilities of Council officers, and the Monthly Service Reports. The general consensus of Grand Knights and Deputy Grand Knights was that they received good initial information about membership, recruitment and retention, a brief but good overview of programs with contact information for those supporting the programs and some but not enough information about effective leadership and meeting management. They also indicated that the information technology website review will be useful. There were a number of requests for more detailed information about implementing all of the Knights of Columbus programs and more time for a dialogue between those making presentations and the audience. There were also a number of requests for recruitment role playing demonstrations, more detailed information about on-line recruitment, sessions for Council program chairmen and additional short bio-breaks. A few participants stated that there was too much focus and time spent on membership and recruitment.
District Deputies were generally interested in understanding their duties and responsibilities, conduct of and participation in ceremonials, and recruitment. The District Deputies indicated that the Star Tracker for reports would be useful. They thought that some of the information in videos was outdated and described “how it was done” rather than how we should accomplish our tasks today. The District Deputies were also interested in having more information about member management and member billing, which were only described in the two Financial Secretary training sessions.
The various other Council officers and chairmen attended to learn about skills they would need to properly serve in their various capacities, learn more about on-line membership and learn about sources of information describing their duties and responsibilities. The Council officers and chairmen requested more information about access to sources for information that would help them understand their duties and responsibilities. In addition, there were several requests for hard copies of the state directory.
Many of the summer meeting participants in all categories expressed an appreciation for the opportunity to meet and start networking with Washington State Council officers and chairmen as well as fellow officers and chairmen in other Councils within our State. The only significant criticism was lack of a comprehensive agenda several days before the start of the summer meeting providing start times for training sessions so that participants could know what their arrival time should be. Vivat Jesus!
Fraternally,
Scott hulse State Warden
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