President's Message  

July 20th, 2010

SERvice TO MAnkind. 

Our organization's name comes from those three words and signifies our legacy for the past 98 years.  Society has witnessed many creative ideas that were developed over the last 98 years that have been popular and become necessary to us, such as the automobile; electricity; telephones; television and the internet.

Service To Mankind has remained a constant throughout our history.  Sertoma has the largest scholarship program in the country for deaf/hard of hearing undergraduates and master level degrees in speech pathology and audiology.  Sertoma presented over 90 scholarships in 2010.  Our organization has several other programs available to speech and hearing affiliates and agencies, plus speech and hearing programs that our local clubs carry out in their communities.

Our clubs donated $5,521,097 and gave 430,272 hours of service to their charitable projects. 

Just as service has been a constant throughout our history, the need for members to raise those dollars and give those hours of service is important to ensure our ability to carry out our national mission and serving the needs of our communities. 

According to information in the Volunteer manual, that is included with the Club Manual, over 61 million individuals across the country donate time and talent through volunteerism, and individuals between 35 and 54 are more likely to volunteer than those in other age groups.  Another recently published survey indicated that over 91% of the individuals volunteered within the last 18 months.  I encourage you to read the Volunteer Manual and utilize the information in your membership plans.

We need to FOCUS: 
F stands for the future of our organization and securing the members necessary to continue serving others. 
O stands for the opportunities that exist for new members that will ensure our ability to continue serving our communities. 
C stands for the commitment necessary to grow our membership in our clubs and build the new clubs in new areas. 
U stands for the unity needed to attract new members and expand our hearing health mission as well as our service to our communities.
S stands for the Service we provide locally and nationally.

I ask you to join with me this next year and FOCUS on membership growth, retention and building new clubs.

Your President, Dennis Lawler