Chapter News

Meet Judy and Charlene

Meet Judy and Charlene, our ALC Foods chairmen. For more than 20 years, ALC Foods has been an integral part of what Assistance League does, so Judy and Charlene have a large enterprise to oversee! One of their major tasks is scheduling for one of the biggest committees in the organization. They schedule meetings to suggest and taste potential products; meetings to critique current products and their marketability; and meetings to distribute raw ingredients, instructions, and packaging. They also schedule work parties for our assembly-line products.

In addition to scheduling, they recruit helpers: creative people to design and order packaging; a computer maven to design the labels that appear on each package; someone to seek grants and donations; cooks to make our prepared items; painstaking people to put together mixes that meet exacting specifications; friendly, knowledgeable salespeople to sell the products at our events; people to inventory products before and after each event; people to set up and dismantle the extensive food displays; and people to prepare samples.

Although they delegate many jobs to willing helpers, they still have plenty to keep them busy. They do bulk shopping for ingredients that we use in multiple products and divide them up for use in individual products. They keep financial records and spread sheets. They update all the recipes and instructions on the chapter computer so that we can easily tweak recipes or re-introduce a product that hasn’t been made for awhile.

Judy and Charlene also serve as the liaisons between their committee and the chairmen of events where ALC Foods are featured. In essence, ALC Foods is a small business run entirely with volunteers with Judy and Charlene as CEO (and jack-of-all-trades!)

Behind the Scenes with the Winter's Eve Chairmen

Meet Karen and Daryl, the chairmen of our 8th annual Winter’s Eve Corvallis celebration. They oversee about 25 sub-committee chairmen who, in turn, oversee over 100 volunteers. Winter’s Eve is our biggest fundraiser, so work began this year shortly after last year’s event was over. Karen and Daryl checked OSU’s football schedule and the preferences of our local merchants before selecting Friday, December 2nd, for the 2011 event. Then they filled openings for sub-committee chairmen. Many volunteers were willing to serve in their positions for another year, but others were ready to try something new (or take a much-needed break from responsibility!) 
 
Their food and beverage chairmen have persuaded over 30 restaurants and caterers to participate the evening of the event; everyone always makes note of the wonderful food! People notice the decorations too. Each year, our new members join together to take charge of decorating the tent, so Daryl and Karen give instructions and answer questions about the process to make the tent beautiful and festive. Much preparation goes into having everything ready to go when the big day arrives; those new members will be tying bows and fluffing wreaths and checking strands of lights for weeks!

Many ticket holders look for ALC Foods mixes and treats to purchase at the event, so those products get created in the weeks preceding the event. Prints, holiday cards, and ornaments also go into production. Publicity for the event appears in store windows, on television and radio, on posters, at the library, in newspapers and other publications, and on this website. Although Karen and Daryl are available for consultation, the well-oiled committees function quite efficiently!

Other committees function equally efficiently but much less noticeably. For instance, the electrical committee makes sure we have heat and lighting in the tent, something most of us take for granted. The corporate-sponsor committee quietly goes about the business of gathering support for the event. The facilities-and-equipment committee takes care of ordering just about everything from the tent to the napkins to the electrical cords. Our merchant liaisons’ job is primarily visible to the local merchants, not to the ticket holders, but, of course, all the open stores the night of the event are a result of their efforts. We notice signs identifying restaurants and silent auction donors, but rarely does anyone think about where the signs came from. Nor do most people think about what’s required to keep the street empty so that the tent can be set up or all of the permits that need to be secured! The smiling volunteers who staff the event are visible, but the hours spent recruiting and scheduling for their presence isn’t. Nor do partiers tend to notice that someone is regularly emptying the trash or keeping tables cleared. But Daryl and Karen will be taking note of all the details, big or small, to make sure that this year’s Winter’s Eve Corvallis is better than ever!

Delegates Attend National Conference

In September, three delegates from Corvallis attended the annual National Conference, sponsored by National Assistance League. They joined almost 1000 other women in San Francisco to hear two keynote speakers and choose from 29 possible workshops to attend. They networked with members of other chapters from around the United States and came home with renewed enthusiasm and many new and useful ideas.

Meet Sandi and Moe

Meet Sandi and Moe, our current SAT Review chairmen. They have the tasks of setting up twice-yearly review sessions for students planning to take the SATs in preparation for college. Long before the students ever enter the classroom for their review sessions, Sandi and Moe have been hard at work behind the scenes.

They have arranged for a venue for the classes, which meet for six weeks in both the fall and the winter. They also contract with two teachers to conduct the review sessions: a math instructor and a language-arts instructor. Then they set the dates for the reviews based on the dates that the actual SAT exams are administered locally so that the students can complete all of their six sessions before the test date.

Once the logistics have been covered, Sandi and Moe review their records from previous sessions to determine how many of the test-review guidebooks they need to order for upcoming classes. (Often, they need to decide where to store a mountain of books until they’re distributed!) With plenty of books ordered, their next job is to make sure that all the local students know about the review classes. Contacting local school counselors is one of their methods of getting the word out, but individual letters to the families of local juniors and seniors is even more effective. They print up letters and registration forms and recruit volunteers to help prepare the mailing. In the meantime, they recruit a volunteer to serve as the registrar. She will collect the registration forms and accompanying checks and send out letters confirming that each student is officially enrolled in the session of choice.

Once the registration forms and letters go out, Sandi and Moe begin to field phone calls from parents with questions and concerns about the program.  With the help of the school counselors, they also arrange scholarships for the classes for students in need. Additional duties include arranging to have a volunteer in charge of providing snacks for the students during their short break during the review classes and recruiting several volunteers to facilitate the arrival, departure, and feeding of the students. An equally important responsibility is recruiting and training additional volunteers to help with scoring the tests, using SAT-provided charts and equations, so that students know their test results when they attend their final meeting with the instructors. Sandi and Moe will also have a final meeting with the instructors to evaluate the sessions and begin planning for the next ones. Although students are aware of the classrooms, teachers, books, and snacks, Sandi and Moe form the superstructure supporting the visible parts of the program.