Sustainability, leadership training and member engagement are central to our club and the foundation that was laid by our founder, Robert Zeitsiff, z”l, for whom we have named our annual Brotherhood Shabbat Scholar-in-Residence Weekend.

We’ve shared a copy of our upcoming slate of officers for 2023-2024, which shows our incoming president, vice president, officers and board structure, which includes also a number of key voting committee chair positions, including Programming, Membership, Hessed (caring), Tikkun Olam (mitzvot & repairing the world), and Publicity, who are named in our club’s bylaws. Each president’s term is two years, and the four vice presidents move up each in turn. The collaboration between a president and his first vice president is very important. This succession strategy has helped groom each new president and create a sense of continuity.

We start our year off with an annual half-day executive leadership strategy planning meeting of all the officers and key committee chairs; this is held in July and organized by our incoming president and first vice president and allows us to set the vision for the year. We typically also invite the immediate outgoing president(s) as well.

At that meeting, we begin discussions around the year’s calendar, which we will present to the board at our end-of Summer kickoff BBQ/board meeting, which is held at one of our member’s home on a lake in the area.

We use Google Groups for regular email messaging to our club members and get support from the Temple office in including notices in weekly bulletins, the Temple monthly newsletter, and web site. We also use Facebook Groups to publicize our activities.

We regularly have 25-30 members attend our monthly board meetings, which are open to all members, and except during COVID when they were held on Zoom or outdoors in the local High School parking lot, are on Sunday mornings over bagels and lox. One of the goals at meetings is to build camaraderie and fellowship, and a lot of collaboration happens at each meeting. A program launched by our first vice president this year, “Cause Without Applause”, allows us all to vote on a monthly donation to a meaningful charity – this has helped develop a sense of shared responsibility and charity. Our annual work on a Habitat for Humanity home, support for holiday Meals on Wheels, participation in Project Bread’s Walk for Hunger, and other similar contributions allow our members to feel they are participating in tikkun olam. Each year we help sponsor a number of youth to go on the March of the Living Holocaust memorial trip to Poland and Israel.

We hold many engaging social activities throughout the year, from Paid-Up Supper, which featured a NY-based comedian, as well as “Lift Your Spirits” Scotch & steak night, Man of the Year honor/roast, Judaic and sports speaker breakfasts, World Wide Wrap, Hearing Men’s Voices, Jewish Routes discussion series, Holocaust memorial Yellow Candle drive, participation in the Tour de Shuls charity cycling ride, “Burgers & Beers in the Sukkah”, and more. Our “Combined Charities Golf Tournament” and annual online auction have become major fundraising events for the club.

Our annual Brotherhood Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat Weekend is a major weekend for the community.

All these activities require a significant number of volunteers to help organize and run. We use Google Forms and Sheets to invite volunteer participation, and on some occasions we have held phone drives. We have found that volunteering to work on an individual program or event can often lead to greater engagement and deeper involvement.