Follow-up on the April meeting

At the last regular PFLAG meeting we discussed ways to make PFLAG more exciting. With the exception of a few special programs that attract a lot of attention, participation in general meetings is down. Paid membership is also way, way down, and we’re having a much harder time recruiting board members and volunteers to do things like tabling events, providing snacks for the meetings, and stuffing and mailing the newsletter.

Everyone, it seems, thinks of PFLAG-Olympia as a vital organization, but without paid memberships (or generous donations) and not enough personal participation, we won’t remain a vital organization.

Among the things that came up with that meeting are that we need to dispel the myth that PFLAG is just for parents – or, as some put it, tissue paper parents who cry about having gay children. For the past two years our promotional materials at Pride, etc. have used the slogan “PFLAG is not just for parents anymore.” But that doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet. There were suggestions that we try to involve youth more and try to get youth and more other glbtq folks to help parents at tabling events so the public sees that a lot of different people are active.

There were discussions about sponsoring classes in some way, based partly on the success of the recent program on “Intersex 101” presented by Eric Dixon of South Puget Sound Community College. We plan to look into this, and would love to hear from others who have done it or would be interested in working on it with us.

Having more social activities was suggested, and we’ll be looking into ways to do that. Don’t forget our annual picnic every August.

The creation of this blog was also something that was suggested at that meeting too -- see, sometimes we don’t waste any time following up. We are looking for members and local allies who might be interested in blogging with us. We can have up to a hundred authors so let us know if you are interested.

Someone suggested we should have reviews of books and movies in the newsletter – those that are available in our library and others. We can do that if people are willing to submit reviews. Plus, we can publish them here and/or on the website. So, if you read a good book or see a good movie that may be of interest to the glbtq community, please write a brief review and submit it.

And please leave comments on the blog articles if you have a response or a suggestion. Those can be anonymous, but we hope you won’t want to be.