Letter from our Membership Director, Nina Wong-Dobkin
In the last year, we have seen a quarter of our members participate in our league’s involvement with Santa Clara County elections and raising funds for our league. We received training on jobs like Drop Box Couriers (picking up and transporting ballots from Drop Boxes to the Registrar of Voters Office), Vote Center Couriers (picking up and transporting ballots from Vote Centers to the ROV), and coordinators at Logistics and Supply Center. We have raised over $3000 for each of the last two elections (November 2024, November 2025 Special Election) and on track to raise a similar amount from the December 30 Run-off Election.
I have also started holding casual in-person Coffee and Conversations gatherings in October. The next one will be on Dec 6, 10-11AM, Starbucks in Cupertino Target (20745 Stevens Creek Blvd; entrance off Saich Way). Come meet other members (and their friends) and have a relaxing morning sipping your favorite drink and enjoy conversations and connections. Everyone who signs up on the google form will get a homemade treat from me!
Membership Review for 2025
Thank you to our then co-presidents, Elaine Manley and Tracey Edwards for bringing us the opportunity of participating in our county elections through working at various election positions at the November 2024 Presidential Election, we will have participated in three elections after the December 30 County Assessor Run-off. This opportunity turned out to serve two very meaningful purposes for our league: engaging members and raising funds.
Since we were recruiting members to participate, I naturally took on the task of coordinating our members and members’ family and friends to help. We had 24 volunteers for the November 2024 election. A few of us also helped with hand-sorting ballots into precincts for recount and archival storage, which added to the total stipend donations from this election. Everyone who had volunteered were happy they were able to play an active role in our local election. We raised almost $4000. Watch for opportunities to join us for our June primary election and November general election in 2026!
In early 2025, I was pleased to have connected with Membership Directors from the other 4 local leagues in our county. We started our first meeting in February and have met almost every month till we got busy with several county-wide events. This group has provided a caring collaborative space for membership directors to exchange ideas, share their experiences and practices at their leagues, and support each other through LWVUS’ transformation to ChapterSpot in February 2025.
We coordinated and held a county-wide book club in August, reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling. About 25 people came to our in-person meeting at the Saratoga Library. We had 3 facilitators leading 3 small groups of lively discussions. We consulted with each other on publicity materials (now we have postcards with our league’s information to give out at tabling events). We helped support a few county-wide events: Talk by Sam Licardo in Palo Alto, Presentation on Executive Powers and County Assessor Candidate Forum and Pro/Con presentation on the State’s Prop 50 and our County’s Measure Ain Cupertino. Our leagues’ presidents did all the major heavy lifting, along with our tech team. Membership Directors volunteered to man our membership table at these events.
In addition to our usual annual Meet and Greet Elected Officials event in March, we also had a member get-together in September where we had local school board members as speakers. |