We have enhanced our membership database to make it easier to update your club's list.  You can now export the current database into a spreadsheet, add new members and update existing member information and import that spreadsheet into the database.  Watch this 5 minute video that shows the step by step procedure to use this feature.

It is important that you update your club's list of members for the following reasons:

1. Your club members have paid to receive benefits from FJMC.  If we don’t have accurate email and US mail information, we cannot deliver those benefits.  Imaging paying for a magazine subscription and not receiving it!
2. Updating your list of officers in the database allows us to route important information intended for leadership to the right audience.
3. Updating your membership list is a requirement for the Quality Club Award
4. You want your club to be billed correctly.  Your bill is based on the number of members in the FJMC database at the end of the prior fiscal year.  The fiscal year begins on September 1.
5. If we can expand our the number of email addresses in our database, advertisers will pay us to send their advertisements as part or our publications. (We don’t share email addresses with them).
6. We need to be sensitive to the families of those who have passed away and remove their husbands/fathers from our active emailing list.

Are you thinking: why should I be concerned with Quality Club awards or can our club do well without one? If you are having doubts about the value of the Quality Club award, I beg to differ with you. The sole purpose of the award is to help your club become successful and better reflect the FJMC mission of “Involving Jewish Men in Jewish Life”. By attempting to achieve the criteria needed to qualify for a Quality Club award, you follow a blueprint to include many of the most popular and successful programs developed over many decades by other clubs in the FJMC internationally. Why reinvent the wheel when these Quality Club Awards criteria are readily available for your benefit?

The Quality Club award criteria are grouped into two categories: mandatory requirements and optional requirements. There are three subcategories of the optional requirements: programming, club administration and regional and international participation. To qualify for a Quality Club award, the club must satisfy all six mandatory requirements and any ten of the nineteen optional requirements. The complete list of these requirements can be found on the FJMC web page -> Awards -> Quality Club Award. 

The mandatory criteria include participation in the two hallmark FJMC programs events throughout the year, the World-Wide Wrap and the Shoah Yellow Candle program. Other mandatory requirements can be satisfied by participating in a Hearing Men’s Voices program or a Wellness program and by attending the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) or an FJMC consultant-led regional or individual club training program.

Dues are also an important obligation since we are partly dependent on this income for funding the training programs and organizing the biennial convention. The membership database is another key element of compliance. We base our dues on your membership list, and we use it, as well, to take the opportunity to connect directly with club members.

The optional requirements are different programs and activities that can be easily scheduled, because they all have a description on our website, FJMC.org. Is it hard to achieve 10 out of the 19 optional requirements? No, I don’t think so; all it takes is planning and an active Board that wants to have a good time in serving their community. I happen to belong to a Men’s Club that has received the Quality Club award since the program started. The Club has reached this annual milestone by planning its activities and having a good dialogue with its region and international FJMC organization. You can do it too. Contact your Regional board to ask for help or just to have a conversation about how to run your club in general. The Region and FJMC International are here to help and we want to create a relationship with you and your club. You can reach me at bsommerfeld@fjmc.org or Bruce Tomar at batomar1@hotmail.com if you have any comments or suggestions for how to make the club and regional services more useful to you.

You may also consider watching Peter Gotlieb’s TED talk on Building a Quality Club by Using the Quality Club Criteria of the FJMC. Peter speaks about using the Quality Club criteria to help you develop your club into a truly Quality Club.

Benny Sommerfeld, VP Club Services

Editor’s note: If you feel overwhelmed by your club having so many deficiencies in the requirements of a Quality Club award, don’t despair. Just work on a few at a time and eventually you may satisfy all those requirements. In any case, your club will be improved and more successful even before reaching all those requirements.

Without the FJMC, valuable Jewish programming might never occur.  FJMC needs your financial support to in order to continue to create the important programs which keep your Men’s Club vibrant.  You can help preserve the significant impact the FJMC and its members have made, on behalf of the Conservative Movement and World Jewry, by making a pledge. Our movement depends on you!