Mistletoe Missive #2, September 17

Mistletoe Missive

Portsmouth Rotary, Volume 1 Number 2

September 17, 2012

Welcome to Mistletoe Missive....your weekly on Portsmouth Rotary's largest single fundraising project, the sale of Christmas trees, wreaths and ornaments. 

New look

Butch, Ben and many others are working to refurbish the trailer and configure it for better customer service and safety.   Want to help spruce it up?   See them fir details, or give them a holly by phone or email.   Your support will be mulch-appreciated.

Scheduling

Before you know it, you'll be signing up for your three shifts.  Marie's opening the door to signups on October 4, and closing it on October 25.  After that date we'll assign shifts so that all members have three shifts on the schedule.  Please review the new guidelines, which were emailed to you twice with eBulletins in the past week, and are also posted on the website (log in, click on "Christmas Tree Sales Member Info" button under "events",  directly below the "Christmas Tree Sales Public info" button.  If you don't see it, you're not logged in....email me or Jamie, and we can help to reset your password.  A reminder that you also need to email me if you wish to request being excused from sales (as we noted in the guidelines, "exempt" age 65+20 years of service does not excuse you from working on this project). 

Business wreaths.

We've finalized our supplier agreement for wreaths, which will be available in 12", 16" and 24" sizes.   Mark Sullivan's committee will be getting pricing and detail sheets out so you can place orders for your own business use.

New hours and new sales dates

The tree lot will be open 11AM-8PM weekdays, and 9AM-8PM on Saturday and Sunday.  We begin selling trees on Saturday November 24 and will schedule shifts right up to the weekend of December 22-23.  

Cashier training dates

If you intend to sign up as a cashier, you'll need to attend one of our five scheduled classes for training.   Learn how the iPad register system works, tracking tree inventory, credit cards, cash deposit procedures and more.   Shannon Aldrich will conduct the classes as follows:  Thursdays on November 1, 8 and 15 just before Rotary at the PCC (11:15 to 11:45AM); and on two other dates (Wednesday November 14 at 5:30PM, and Saturday November 17 at 10AM)....the latter two classes will be at the Keller Williams training facility, second floor at 501 Islington Street (next door to Dunkin Donuts).  

There are about 90 cashier-shifts over the course of the project, so we'll need to train 25-30 Rotarians to do this job.  Incidentally, you become a part of the tree committee so the training session counts as a meeting makeup (but not a tree sales shift, of course). 

Thank you.

We never say this enough, and I want to do my best to improve on that.  We have a wonderful tree committee that began working on this year's project by de-briefing last year's success on January 16.  Without them, and you, we couldn't be this ambitious, and the results will benefit hundreds of our neighbors on the Seacoast.   So a special early thank-you to our core committee members: Shannon Aldrich, Marie Brownell,  Janice Cassidy, Tricia Cummings, Diane Foley, Steve Kniaz, Butch Ricci, Basil Richardson, John St. Pierre, Mark Sullivan and Ben Wheeler.  

Kudos also to the new business-wreath team, which is growing fast and includes Melissa Benson, Marie Brownell, Linda Browning, Joanie Dickenson, Cathy Edison, Gloria LeBlanc, Lynn McLaren, Deb Rourke,  Mark and Loree Sullivan. 

And to every Rotarian reading this: thank you for your Rotary service  - it makes this project possible!

Dave Underhill, president-elect and tree committee chair

dave@underhilladvisors.com

603-706-3143 mobile, 603-501-0210 home/office