The John Goodwin Tower Award of Excellence----A Guide to an Effective Club

 

The John Goodwin Tower Award of Excellence application form is a tool you can use to assure your club will be efficient, on target with Federation goals, and effective in communicating Republican information to your members. 

ü       Successfully completing the application will earn your club this most prestigious award.

ü       Successfully completing the application will also track your club’s progress as an educational resource for Republican women and men who attend your meetings.

Club Presidents and Awards Chairpersons usually wait until the submission deadline to print out the award application, then struggle to remember when the club did what.  There are tools to make this application process much easier and allow you to stay “on track” in your local club planning.

 These tools are:

  1. A two-page ‘checklist’ that includes a brief description and item number for each application requirement,
  2. A monthly reminder booklet for the years 2008 and 2009, and
  3. The John Goodwin Tower Award of Excellence application.   

 The checklist will make your board more focused because it can be used easily during each planning meeting to note which items on the application may be covered by the plans you are making for the next program.  It can also help in your planning to determine if the activities you are considering are relevant to our goals.  Obviously every event you hold or the agenda for every meeting will not be covered in the application requirements; however, when you are familiar with the expectations of the Federation you will be able to decide the kinds of activities that will be appropriate.  Keep the checklist handy and use it for easy reference.

We will once again have the monthly reminder booklet for the awards criteria.  The format has changed slightly but it still has reminders for each of the next 24 months.  The booklet was included in the President’s Handbook in 2006 and is a very handy reminder.  We have kept the booklet size for the new publication and it will once again be a part of the Handbook that you will be receiving soon.  In this booklet each page is divided into 2 columns, one for each year, for example, the first page has a list for January 2008 and a list for January 2009 each with brief reminders for that month.  Most of the reminders are marked with related item numbers in the application so you can quickly refer to them and make appropriate notes directly onto the application.

The Awards Application itself is also a good planning tool because it gives details of the requirements making them understandable and easier to follow.  So be sure you read it carefully and have a good understanding before you even try to use either the checklist or the monthly planner.

 

 

SO, now there are 3 parts to the best organizational tool available for your club.

  1. The application itself that should be printed, read, and considered immediately.
  2. The checklist you can use in planning sessions.
  3. And a monthly planner that will serve as a reminder each month.

None of these is to be used alone.  The checklist does not have all the details that the application has and the monthly planner does not have the detail of either of the others.  But, both the checklist and planner are faster to review and use to keep notes as well as keep you on track than the actual application.

You should thoroughly familiarize yourself with the TFRW John Goodwin Tower Award of Excellence application now. You can get a copy online at www.TFRW.org.   I also suggest you read through both the checklist, also available at tfrw.org and the monthly planner, available in the 2008-2009 TFRW Handbook.

I will keep the monthly planner and checklist in front of me at each of our local Board meetings.  I will encourage our local Awards Chair to do the same and then make appropriate notes on the application when we complete an item.  These notes will make completion of the application a simple task in September 2009.

Earning the Award of Excellence and being recognized at the TFRW convention in 2009 is a great honor.  It is an accomplishment in which your club can take pride.  It is not the only reason to work toward completing the Awards application, however. There may be legitimate reasons why your club will be unable to complete every item on the application-------------that does not mean you should not continue to use the application as a guideline.  These tools are an outstanding way to measure progress of your club’s work.  Keep them year-to-year to help you appreciate how you are progressing and what you have accomplished.

You will be receiving information soon about the “Best Newsletter Award”, the “Most Improved Newsletter Award”, and the “Ten Outstanding Award”.  These are wonderful goals to work towards and opportunities to showcase the work of your club.

 

Rebecca Bradford 

TFRW  Awards Chairman