We have experienced about a 15% increase in membership since January, and our membership numbers continue to rise. During the Disabilities Expo held in New Jersey in late April, we signed up 89 members in one day. Many of our new members are women and, for the first time in our organization’s history, we have signed up kids below 18 years of age.
As our member totals increase and our membership demographics change, we continue to seek ways to provide service to all our members. This entails not only varying our programs, but also expanding our activities over increasingly wider areas. As mentioned last month, we are in the process of developing our budget for our next fiscal year and are incorporating as many new ideas from staff as we can on how best to serve our members. I invite new members to submit their input and ideas, and this includes not just the members themselves, but also the parents of our younger members.
Speaking of our younger members, in early May, in collaboration with the NYC Department of Education, we held sports clinics on wheelchair softball, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair basketball and volleyball for about 50 school children with physical disabilities. Additional information concerning this event will be given in next month’s Orbit. For now, I would just like to express my gratitude for the collaboration we received from sports organizations and the general community, and for the service rendered by our members and staff members who served as coaches and volunteers. It’s clear that our staff remains strongly committed to maintaining and enhancing our reputation of service to our members and the disabled community, and that our members are willing to pitch in when the need arises.
Over the last couple of months, we have also continued to reach out to business and community leaders to tell them about our organization. As noted in an earlier article, this is the first time that we are pursuing these contacts. The meetings we have had to date are encouraging, and we see good potential to harness support for our cause and our expanded mission. These contacts also help us create awareness not only about the special needs of our members, but also about the abilities, talents and resources that the disabled community brings to our country and to society as a whole.
You will soon be receiving a mailing explaining how we are going to conduct our online membership meeting this year. As I mentioned last month, this is the first time we will be holding a meeting on this scale, and we are looking forward to everyone’s participation. The first order of business at this meeting will be installation of our newly elected Board members. So, if you have not voted yet, I urge you to do so immediately and not put it off again.
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or input you may have. We would love to hear from you and get some feedback on how we are doing. I also invite you to visit our Web site www.unitedspinal.org on a regular basis, since we are constantly enhancing and updating it.
Gerard M. Kelly
Executive Director
