A note of appreciation from OZ:
First off I would like to thank all of you for your help in getting other VRCC members together in your area. We have grown so much as a club that it now makes sense to break the areas down by cities, counties or areas. The original "Chapter Leader" will now be called the "State Rep.", but will also be the "Area Leader" for their city, county, area. If you look at the way the new chapter page is setup, you can see what we are doing now. Click Here
I would like the "State Reps." to work with the other chapter leaders in their state. It would be nice if the "State Rep." could put together a state ride with all the other chapters in their state. If you only have one chapter in your state, you might want to put out a call to the members in your state to start their own VRCC chapter. This would take the load off of just one guy or gal.
We look forward to a great year in the VRCC and with your help we will give all Valkyrie riders a year of great fellowship with others who enjoy this great bike and great club! You folks are the ones who make this thing work. We thank you for that.
If you are thinking about becoming a chapter Leader/Rep., but are not sure what all is involved, here are some guidelines.
First off the chapters are run by it's Members. The VRCC is here to support your chapter in any way that we can. We will help you to promote events, fund raisers, or any other chapter lead activity. From time to time we will donate T-Shirts, pins patches or parts from the F6Rider store or ask our sponsors to donate stuff to help you raise money for your chapter. Many of our chapters hold 50/50 contest in order to raise money to support the chapter. Remember that we do not charge a membership fee at the national level, so these gifts come from the support that YOU have already given to our sponsors, and we thank you for that. If we had a membership fee like most other clubs we would obviously have more resources to do more in the way of promotion, but we built this club with the idea that even with free membership we could do some great things here. I think that the concept has exceeded our expectations.
Many of our chapters have their own VRCC chapter website. This is not a requirement to have a active chapter, or to be a chapter leader, but it is a great way to promote your chapter. If you are good at getting folks together for a ride but do not have the time or skills to put together a chapter website, ask your members if anyone of them would like to volunteer to help in that area. You can find all the VRCC chapters on the Hot Links page and at the bottom of this page. Take a look at them and then you can get an idea what some of the chapters have been up to. We are willing to provide free web space on the Valkyrie Rider's servers for your website so you won't have to incur the hosting fees.
Some of our chapter leaders have used the membership list to provide them with the contacts they need for a mass email to their chapter members. This is another great way to keep in touch with their members and let them know about up coming rides in their area. One problem with this is that some of the members have put in the wrong email address when they signed up. Some how we need to figure out how to get the message to these folks to correct their emails. We do have phone numbers for most of the members, and when they fill out the membership form they can check if it is alright to share their # with others. Those who are on the VORTEX list have their phone # there too in most cases.
Being a chapter leader can be very rewarding and also very frustrating. Some chapters have no problem putting together 20 to 40 guys for a ride, and some chapter leaders can't even get folks to respond to their emails. I think the problem is not so much the chapter leaders fault, but the members in their area. Some folks just don't like being in a group, I can understand that. If YOU are a chapter leader that has a good turn out at your meetings, we would ask you to do a little write up on how your chapter works, and what you do to get the members together. I will post them here for other leaders to look at. Hopefully this will help get the other chapters off of the ground.
We are going to set up a chapter leaders meeting once a month so that we can talk about what is working and what needs to be changed in order to help each chapter leader. It will be a good time to get to know each other too. We are still working on the details of just how to do that. Don't know if a conference call or a chat room would be best. We'll have to experiment.
Promoting your chapter can be done in many ways. First off you can print out VRCC business cards to hand out to folks you meet on the road. This is a great way to get folks to the site and to let them know about your chapter. You can modify the card to meet your needs as long as it is still a VRCC card when you get done :-) Another way to promote the club and your chapter is to print out the membership form and keep them in your saddle bags, or hand them out to your local Honda dealer. If you have a rider who does not have a computer but would still like to join you can get their info and sign them up online yourself. When you come to the email part, just put in yours. Let them know that you will give them a call when one of your meetings come up.
If you are now a chapter leader and you are not doing anything with your chapter because of one reason or another we would ask that you would pass the hat to someone that may have more time or may have some good ideas on how to get the chapter going. We have folks that have told us that their chapter is dead and that their chapter leader has not responded to emails to them. We all have things come up in our lives that change our plans. If this is the case with you, please email me and let me know that you are no longer able to be the chapter leader to your state. We do want to thank you for your support in the past, and hope that things will workout so that you can once again be involved in the chapter.
I hope this helps in your decision to be a chapter leader, and gives you some good guidelines on what it takes. All you really need is a great desire to ride with other Valkyrie Riders.
Here are some links that you should know about.
Contact the VRCC Support Staff
Contact the VRCC World, State & Area (Chapter) Leader Coordinator