PROGRESS REPORT FOR 2007 & PROPOSED AGENDA FOR 2008
By HOH President Daniel Strain

Dear HOH Officers, members, patrons, and friends:

This is a report on what we've accomplished in 2007 at the Humanists of Houston, and a proposal for what I hope to help us accomplish in 2008 if re-elected.

On November 2, 2006, before being elected as president, I posted a document to the group called "Proposed Agenda for HOH". This was essentially to let HOH Members know what it was they were voting for. Although what I wrote was intended as a long term agenda, not necessarily one-year's worth of activity - I will go through each of the eight items I outlined in that original document and give an overview of where we stand on them today:

As I stated originally, the four positions of President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer outlined in our by-laws were but a 'skeleton crew'. I proposed that we add the appointed positions of: Program Director, Outreach Director, and Events Director.

The Program Director was to have been responsible for arranging the presentation for our Main Monthly Gathering. We actually did better than finding a single person. Thanks to the advice and input from several others, this year we have added a Program Committee, composed of Brian Ballard, Art Fay, Bob Finch, Sheila Finch, and Marian Hillar. This committee has been doing an excellent job of arranging the topics for the Gathering, and plans to have an even better outlined long-term program in the future. Whereas the President was often consumed with 'who to get next' for the monthly meetings, their volunteerism and good work has allowed me to focus on all of the other areas of development for HOH. As such, the Program Committee has been one of the best additions to the HOH Organizational structure.

As for Outreach Director, I have been filling this function myself and we have yet to find a specific person to handle these responsibilities. However, given my background in marketing, I may be the best suited for this task for now anyway. As the second half of this document will mention, we have plans to bring on paid help for a few hours a month, and this will greatly enhance our ability to place timely advertising.

The position of Events Director (handling special events) was successfully filled this year by Axit Poudal. Axit has good experience with arranging events and several good connections. As this year has been a 'year of transition' in many respects, I have yet to work with Axit as much as I hope to. I am looking forward to working more frequently with Axit on at least one larger special event planned for next year.

In addition to the positions I proposed in the original agenda, we also had a Membership Director for a time, thanks to the volunteerism of Frank Mick. Frank was very committed and helpful, but his schedule has not allowed him to continue so these functions were merged into the Secretary position. They have been handled this year by HOh Secretary Jerry Harris. Jerry's volunteerism in this area and many other areas has been outstanding. He is truly one of HOH's best assets and I'm very grateful for his good work.

On the whole, the reorganization has worked out very well. We now have, in total, perhaps double the number of people performing vital functions for HOH than we had at the beginning of 2007. These functions have distributed the workload more evenly such that I was able to focus on big-issue matters of change and growth.

In this section I recommended that we completely rearrange the HOH Monthly Meeting (which I now call the HOH Main Monthly Gathering). As planned, we have created a whole new structure for the monthly Gatherings, which now include a reception, snacks, an inspirational reading, main presentation, and discussion. The Gatherings are now varied, get more out of the time we have, and are more interesting, positive, and appealing. This has been a definite improvement, and attendance has been good.

One of the most exciting additions is something we didn't have before. Child care is now available for parents in an adjacent room. We are still getting out the word about this, but it has been announced and placed on the website, and I believe it will be an enormous asset to us as we try to attract more families and people of different ages to the group.

The Gathering wasn't the only thing we reformatted. I also proposed we have leadership meetings before the main monthly gathering each month. These have been established as planning meetings and are available to anyone to attend. These allow us some in-person discussion on planning issues, to augment our frequent online planning.

More importantly, as I had proposed, the concept of the "HOH Club" has been a success. We already had at least one Club (the Contemplatives Club), but have since added the Religion, Ethics, & Society Club (organized by Marian Hillar), and the Women's Club (organized by Vice-President Sheila Finch). Both of these clubs have been a success, and the Women's Club has brought out many women who haven't attended other events before. This is one of the things I've been very excited about, and has great potential to diversify our membership in the future. Lastly, we have had a Social Club, which has had moderate activity, but we are in the process of adding to that an HOH Young Adults Club. Whereas the Women's Club has helped bring more women into our family of activities, it is hoped the Young Adults Club will help include greater age diversity. Its first event will be a Halloween Party this year.

Other special events this year included a good Darwin Day public event and a World Humanist Day dinner.

I said in the original agenda that quarterly meetings of representatives from the Alliance would help maintain cooperation and interaction between the groups.

I have met with representatives of the Alliance groups once, and have kept tabs through an Alliance email group, with all of us sending one another occasional announcements, but the meetings have not been quarterly. I have since decided, and I believe those in the other groups would agree, that we can make progress with meetings that are more sporadic on an 'as needed' basis, and handle other things online.

As an example of this sort of progress, there have been some important alliance successes this year, including the following:

- I have created a website for the Alliance, which links to all member groups, and houses an archive of our past issues of the Alliance newsletter.

- A committee for the planning of the upcoming Winter Solstice Party was thankfully formed by helpful volunteers.

- All the Alliance groups seem to be sharing announcements, fliers, and links (better than I had originally thought, until corrected).

- HCOF has stated they would be willing to be part of a cooperative effort to have a space of our own, when both of our groups are ready for that.

- We have added yet a fourth member-organization to the Alliance this year: the Atheist Meetup group.

- We also added a fifth member-organization this year: the Secular Students of Rice, who are now passing along HOH announcements, and will be announcing to us when they have special events. They are also now getting the Alliance newsletter.

In my original agenda, I had expressed the desire to have the newsletter return to a format where all of the groups were more welcome to have a space of their own. Of course, this can only happen insofar as those groups choose to fill such a space, but talking with Editor Jim Knierien is one of the things I have done this year. The format has been changed somewhat and the other groups have been asked again for more participation in the newsletter. The Atheist Meetup group now has a link to the latest issue of that newsletter in the message board section of their website, which we should be happy to hear.

This area is the most untapped from what has been handled this year. We have had some people attend activities of other organizations on their own (such as TFN) wearing new HOH shirts and passing out fliers, but not on a large scale. In addition, I have communicated with Nancy Friedman at Atheists United we have an agreement to pass on their announcements. Another organization we have been helping has been the End Hunger Network, which is the organization that we have started using through which to donate our canned goods collected in that new program. We still have much we can do in this area however, which I plan to address below.

This was a proposal that we award a small annual scholarship to a local college student who wins a contest for a Humanist essay, or essay on humanistic values. I have since brought this up in planning sessions and it seems to be agreed upon that this would be a good thing to do. An amount that seemed reasonable was $500. I have not proceeded with specifics on this, preferring to handle other matters first (such as the other items listed here in which significant progress was made). But we are close to being ready to begin such a program. Financially, thanks to reforms in our revenue structure, we are certainly capable now.

This category was broken up into three sections: advertising, merchandising, and internet. On advertising, we have conducted extensive research on local options, and have decided that many of the newspaper options are not effective for the costs (this information was important to research, even if negative). After meeting with those at the radio station 94.5FM, we have placed an add on the Radio for the first time, which can be heard on our website as well. This was a limited run advertisement, which hasn't appeared to be effective. In any case, the attempt needed to be made, as discovering this was an important step and helped to refine our options. Other options for radio still exist on other stations, but we would more likely get more out of getting an actual program on the radio, rather than advertising. Options that seem most appealing now for paid advertisement are the college newspapers, which we've found to be financially suitable after looking into the numbers. I have received input from other members in planning sessions, and plan to go forward with regular ads in these venues for a time.

The second section was merchandising. I have successfully established an ongoing means for us to obtain T-shirts, mugs, pins, and any other number of items for HOH. These can now be ordered directly through our website. We do not make much money off of the items, as the margins are slim, but the purpose of them is not revenue. It is good enough that we do not lose money on them (which we don't), as I view these to be a matter of 'walking advertisement'. Establishing these merchandise options has been a success.

In the third section, I called for our website to be streamlined, more easy to navigate, more functional, and brought up to date aesthetically. All of this has been accomplished with a completely new overhaul to the website with all new functionality and appeal. This was one of the earliest and most important things to accomplish, since all other exposure and advertising directs new people to our website. Most of the new faces we've encountered this year have come to us through the website.

I also called for us to be more present and active in other parts of the internet than merely our website. I've proceeded with that agenda and it has been one of the most exciting potentials for our group, of which I think we still have yet to see the full effects. These efforts have included a new presence on popular sites like Facebook.com, Meetup.com, and most notably, MySpace.com, where we have gained an additional 200+ new "friends" of our MySpace page. These are people who specifically came to us to be listed as such on our page, they are able to receive announcements of our events, they are primarily young people with a good gender mix, and they are all new people who were not already on our rosters at the beginning of the year - effectively doubling the size of our mailing list to 400.

On the whole, our outreach and advertising efforts have been proceeding as promised. We have begun to see some new faces out of this, which I think is the beginning of a second wind for our local Humanist community. But I suspect the real effects will come into play once we get our new Young Adults Club up and running, thus improving retention and building relationships over time.

On a side note, two other events of some significance this year may have played an outreach/exposure role for us. I participated as a panelist at a philosophy roundtable at Rice University, as well as local public television, which allowed for the mentioning of HOH as an organization to a wider audience. As an AHA-certified Humanist Minister, I have also been performing weddings and this has brought exposure as I always mention HOH and invite couples, and will soon bring us at least two new young members. Measuring the effects of this sort of 'marketing side-effect' can be tricky, since people may not always respond immediately, but such actions tend to have slow cumulative effects the more we can do them.

I noted in my original agenda that I wanted to seriously begin exploring options for a roof over our heads, but noted that financial issues and issues with the development fund had to be worked out first. I have initiated a 'Patron Program' whereby those who choose to become Patrons agree to pay an ongoing $20/month. We now have 8 Patrons, which has more than doubled our usual annual operating funds. This is what has allowed the special events, advertising, and other activities we've done so far, and will do in the future (such as the scholarship and other items). We now have a program in place that will grow over time and finally make it feasible for us to reliably know that we can meet a given monthly payment.

Bob Finch has initiated the formation of a committee to handle development fund issues, and also a 5-Year Plan committee, on which I am serving. The 5YP Committee has outlined a plan that states our commitment to having a space. This, plus the financial reforms I've put in place, has put us on the road to making such a thing a real possibility, perhaps sooner than many suspect.

In summary, I would say it has been a busy and productive year. Things have moved along according to my original agenda fairly well, but there is still more to do. In addition, many new ideas and directions have come up, thanks to the participation of many of our members and developing circumstances. All of these I plan to outline in the next section, PROPOSALS FOR 2008.

Summary of Accomplishments in 2007

• Reorganized and expanded positions to bring about more volunteerism and spread responsibilities more broadly.

• Reformatted the monthly gathering to be more positive, structured, and on target. Called for a Planning Committee to keep it running as such, freeing officers to give more time on longer term growth and development.

• Encouraged the addition of several new clubs and activities to the HOH monthly schedule, which are helping to bring in new faces and diversify our gender and age makeup - the best of which effects are likely soon to come.

• Rebuilt a new HOH website with added appeal, utility, and functionality. This included a news section, list of events, videos, and ability to donate to HOH and order HOH merchandise online. Also redesigned several new informational fliers on Humanism, HOH, and the Alliance.

• Reorganized revenue stream by creating a program that more than doubled our annual operating funds, and placed us on the road to realistically having a building space for HOH and friends.

• Increased online exposure for HOH through popular social sites like Facebook, Meetup, and MySpace - effectively doubling our contact base with an influx of young and gender-diverse new people.

• Increased exposure for HOH through public events, and public appearances, including a Darwin Day celebration and a special speaker event.

• Started a modest but ongoing HOH canned food program for the needy, and set the consensus and groundwork for future humanistic programs to come.

• Worked for the health of the Houston Humanist Alliance, by creating its own website and online archive of newsletters, meeting & conversing with representatives of the other groups, encouraging a slight reformat of the newsletter to be more inclusive of other groups, and encouraging the addition of two more member-organizations this year.

Click HERE to Continue >>> Proposals for 2008