New Members & Recruitment

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WIN-WIN

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Based on our recent strategic planning efforts, we are changing our annual membership contribution to be more inclusive. The contribution options are now $300, $600, $1200, $1800, and $2500. Please join at a level that is meaningful to you, understanding the bigger our pool of money, the bigger our grants, and the greater our impact.

Everyone will have an equal voice within the organization, regardless of contribution amount. These new options will welcome more Girlfriends to participate in collective giving while continuing to provide significant grants. Definitely a win-win!

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Your Friendly Outreach Skills Are Needed

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Come join the Membership Committee for the last two weeks of April. We will be working the phones to encourage members to renew, and potential members to join, and experience the impact of pooling resources through membership in ninety-nine girlfriends. A brief orientation will be provided and no experience is necessary. Please let us know if we can count on you to help with this fun and rewarding volunteer opportunity. Let’s be sure nobody misses out.

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WE’RE FAMOUS! :-)

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We don’t just collectively give and learn. We also collectively recruit by each sharing about ninety-nine girlfriends in our own way. Thanks to Elisa Hornecker whose contribution led to a magazine cover and a great article about ninety-nine girlfriends! How are YOU recruiting? Let us know so we can share

Read the article here.

Share & Connect

At the December’s Awards Celebration, we asked you to help make 2023 another great year of learning and grantmaking by joining/renewing and sharing & connecting and now we’re offering some tips on how to do just that.

SHARE & CONNECT

Share some of our awesome recruiting resources. You'll find a short video, with voiceover by the wonderful Girlfriend Janine Wolf, and a new "article kit" made possible by Elisa Hornecker (see the Stroll article below) and more! Share these materials and invite your friends and colleagues to connect with us and join!

If each of us helps to bring in a new member we can continue to invest in our community and help make a difference!

Join / Renew

At the December’s Awards Celebration, we asked you to help make 2023 another great year of learning and grantmaking by joining/renewing and sharing & connecting and now we’re offering some tips on how to do just that.

JOIN/RENEW

We invite you to join/renew today. This is the easiest and fastest way to contribute. Why wait until the last minute when you can do this today! (Either way, your membership expires on 4/30/2024).

Join Us For 2023

We know many members want to contribute before the end of the year for tax purposes or for employee matching programs. If that is you, or you just want to get it done, you can renew here. Employer matching programs have helped us increase our grant pool and have funded important educational opportunities. We encourage you to select ninety-nine girlfriends as your match recipient and we appreciate your generosity. If you need any help with receipts, please let us know.

Membership for 2023 Opens December 1!

Girlfriends will be able to renew or join for 2023 beginning December 1, 2022!

Start thinking about who you know that might want to learn more about ninety-nine girlfriends and invite them to the Awards Celebration happening on Tuesday, December 13. This event is a great way - on a fun and celebratory evening - to learn about our incredible Impact Partners and to meet some of the amazing Girlfriends who fuel this community.

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Another Great Group of Girlfriends!

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We are thrilled to share that we have 379 members for 2022! In addition to the 312 Girlfriends who renewed, 67 new Girlfriends decided to join us. Welcome to all of you! (Although this number is smaller than last year, don’t be dismayed. Women’s giving circles have retracted a little bit nationally over the past year as a result of COVID and our model is to make the biggest impact we have with whatever number of Girlfriends join us in any given year.)

New Member Number Coming Soon

As you know, our deadline to renew for 2022 was April 23. We are in the midst of finalizing our membership number and are excited to share that with you soon. Before I joined the membership committee, I wondered why it took extra time to figure out how many members we have. In case you’re curious too, here’s my short answer. We have a lot of different ways Girlfriends join and pay. With the rush of renewals at the end, it takes us a while to sync those up. And we usually need to reach out to a few members with questions.

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We Welcome Our Six New Fellows!

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The Fellows Program is thrilled to welcome our six new Fellows: April Jay Unterberger, Brianna Babbitt, Hanna Lilly, Josie Greer, Katrina Machorro, and Tuyen Ta. Earlier this month, we also hosted a virtual graduation for third-year Fellow Mikayla Posey – featuring customized Zoom backgrounds, spring tulips, inspiring poetry, and a gift certificate for a professional photo. Thanks to everyone who celebrated with us!

Renew Now!

With more than 230 members for 2022 already, we are feeling positive about the coming year. AND with 24 days until our April 23 deadline to join or renew, we have 250 members who haven’t renewed yet. That’s over half of our 2021 members! Please renew today if you haven’t already so we can continue to support our impact partners and communities (and give our hard-working membership committee some peace of mind).

Host Your Own Mini Cafe

Nothing is more engaging than your personal touch. If you have girlfriends who’d like to learn about ninety-nine girlfriends we have a fun idea for you! Host your own mini-cafe utilizing these timely videos.

Invite your friends to check out The Magic of ninety-nine girlfriends and Pip and Tammy’s fireside chat and then join you to learn more. Let us know when your event is and we’ll try to provide a Girlfriend to answer questions or just use the handy FAQ link. If you need additional materials, please contact Kaye. And if you host a mini-café, please let us know how it goes.

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Fellows Program Draws Wonderful Applicants

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The Fellows program has had an exciting start to the year. In January, we kicked off a new professional development series curated by new girlfriend and new governing board member Agnes Zach. Our every-other-month topics include the Enneagram, Lifelong Financial Health, and Bringing Your Whole Self to Work. In February, Agnes's daughter Maggie hosted a virtual social/game night for us where we all pretended to be different kinds of goats, wreaking virtual havoc from Portland's east side up to a party at the Pittock Mansion. Some of us got to celebrate grantee partner Rose Haven's grand reopening on International Women's Day, where Fellow Liz Starke is the development director. And finally, we received a terrific group of applicants for the next cohort of Fellows. Jeanette Swafford, Michelle Hynes, Mikayla Posey, and Kathleen Porcello conducted interviews in early March, and later this month we hope to invite several new women* to join the program. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word or referred a candidate. We look forward to introducing the new Fellows in a future Member Update.

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Some New Ways to Share ninety-nine girlfriends

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We love getting great ideas from our members! A couple of Girlfriends said they would love to have easy-to-use materials to talk to other women about ninety-nine girlfriends. So we created them. Check out Barbara Hilyer’s video sharing the magic of ninety-nine girlfriends. Pip and Tammy host a fireside chat providing a first glimpse of who we are and what we do for those new to the organization. The next Member Update will provide some links to graphics and an FAQ sheet so check back for that next time. You can use these materials to host a small gathering with prospective members and invite them to join or you can share them by email with an invitation to learn more. Whatever works for you. If you have any feedback or requests for additional materials, please let Kaye know.