The following was written by Rob Brown, District Captain for Convention of States Florida.
As a District Captain in Florida HD86, I had reached out to a volunteer, pharmacist Don Baron, who had filled out an online petition in my district.
Don mentioned that his organization would welcome COS to speak at one of their meetings. He connected me with David MacKarey, who is the President of the Palm Beach County Pharmacy Association and board member of the Florida State Pharmacy Association.
Every volunteer is important. This event was made possible only due to my reaching out promptly to a volunteer in my district, calling him, and having a discussion by phone. After making that connection, he invited me to speak at this monthly meeting.
Their organization typically has sponsors come to their meetings and provide snacks and drinks for the evening meetings and they speak for 30 minutes.
The meeting was held on April 25th at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Theire meetings are held monthly in downtown West Palm Beach each month. The typical attendance is 100-125.
I made enough copies for each attendee to get COS printed material as well as a hard copy petition to sign. Debbie Dargan (COS Florida's Grassroots Coordinator) and my wife Karen helped with handouts and collecting petitions from the crowd.
Approximately 90 people were in attendance. At the start of the presentation I asked who had at least heard anything about COS, and only five or six raised their hands. The crowd was very cordial and listened attentively to my presentation.
I reviewed a high-level Powerpoint overview of the challenges in D.C., why this movement is important, details about the grassroots organization, and how the Article V process works.
At the end of the presentation I asked for signatures on the petition. Given that only a small percentage of those in attendance had heard anything about COS prior to my presentation, I didn’t expect that a large number would immediately jump onboard and sign the petition, but I did get about 15 signed petitions and expect another 10 or so to be filled online. I had time at the end to answer a few follow-up questions.
Overall I think the event was very successful as far as spreading the word to a professional organization that was not really familiar with COS, although their lack of some basic prior knowledge probably was one reason we didn’t get more signed petitions.
One of the takeaways from the presentation is that I think it is very important when we speak to a specific organization such as this that we study what their particular issues may be so that a bridge can be made to the need for COS and so they can make the specific connection to their industry or profession.
I think gathering some news articles or data about how government regulation, overreach, or spending has impacted that industry will make the impact of the COS message much more powerful. The more specific we can be with our message the stronger our pitch can be to get more petition signers.
Finally, this event was made possible due to a prompt contact with a volunteer in my district, calling him, and having a discussion by phone. After making that connection he invited me to speak at his monthly meeting.
The COS organization will continue to grow only if we reach out to new volunteers promptly, preferably by phone to make a connection. If I had only replied by email I don’t think that this speaking opportunity would have occurred.
