Chapter History of and Dealing with COVID-19

Entry Details

When COVID-19 first took over our country early this year and governments began to shut down businesses and life in general, as Managing Director of the Carolinas Chapter I quickly realized that our members were struggling to learn how to conduct business, keep up with legal issues, and not sink in the ocean of a new way of life both professionally and personally.

Therefore, I immediately began to research everything that could possibly affect our managers and their clubs, and I watched and took notes on every webinar available for over five months – well over 100 webinars – and communicated this information immediately to our members. [See photo: notepads full of webinar notes, a 2” binder full of information, and other daily COVID necessities] I began an eblast (“Coronavirus – Carolinas Chapter Update”) which went out at least once a day, sometimes twice. In the beginning, the rules were changing so fast and were so unclear that my goal was to let everyone know as much as I could. I also invited our member clubs to send me updates on what they were doing, letters to their members, and so on, which I shared and which were extremely helpful to other clubs.

On a lighter note, I collected words and phrases that I never wanted to hear again after 2020 and shared those periodically: we’re all in this together, unprecedented, new normal, executive order, pivot, phases, socially distance, contact tracing, an abundance of caution, and on and on.

As an offshoot of these communications, we also implemented the Carolinas Zoom, a Zoom program that was set up every few weeks that allowed our members to simply talk to each other in a casual forum. We would set a basic topic for the beginning of the discussion (such as what cleaning products and procedures are you implementing) and then move into an open discussion. Participants were able to share pertinent information with each other; and, most importantly, they realized that they were not alone in this pandemic situation.

Implementation

This ongoing project was implemented through our MembersFirst email builder for consistency. It was very positively accepted by our members, and I received numerous “thank you” messages – and still do – for saving them the time and headache of trying to locate this information themselves:
-Thank you for all the hard work during this time.
-I would like to thank you for all the work you have done over these past few months for the Club Industry. You have done so much to support all of us, and I am very grateful!!
-Hope you know we are all so appreciative of everything you both do for us in the Carolinas. We are grateful to have you steering the Carolinas CMAA ship!
-Thank you very much for all your very interesting emails and communication. I truly appreciate it.

I truly believe that this “project” has been the most useful thing I have done as a Managing Director. I know that our managers found the daily, up-to-date information extremely helpful because it was timely. They did not have to wait for a weekly communication and they received the information in manageable segments. Further, as part of our regular weekly Carolinas Voice newsletter, I am continuing to include timely information with COVID-related updates.