Dear Worthy Brothers,

Your service as a Knight is so important to the church, community, and yourself. This year has been kind to us as we have added new members and transfer members. Our council continues to grow and I look forward to it becoming even more vibrant. 

The most important asset to any organization is the people in the organization. We are blessed to have so many talented, dedicated, and compassionate members in our council. I am hoping that we can begin to increase our involvement in service initiatives to the community and to mentor existing members into leadership positions. We need ideas to move from bottom to top, not top to bottom. I am actively looking for new ideas and approaches in terms of serving the church and community.

We should be on the lookout for local organizations in the community to support. There are organizations in our area that could use support. At a future meeting we should look at identifying local organizations to support. Examples are PALS, ARC Mercer, and various other organizations.

It is important to continue to recruit new members for obvious reasons. We will recruit at St. Alphonsus and St. George in the future. I still am hoping to recruit more new members from St. James as well. We cannot continue to have the same small group of people doing the majority of the work. Perhaps member recruitment chairs could be identified at St. George and St. James in order to increase visibility in those churches. 

We need to increase attendance at council meetings in order to foster more involvement and to refine what we already do and to add new ideas to support. We need to continue to refresh our approach to how we support the church and community. I have tried to keep meetings as succinct as possible in order to increase socialization at the end of each meeting. We should consider raising our visibility in the church bulletin to encourage attendance and ask for announcements to be made at Mass, and I will take that on.

There certainly are financial resources to support those programs we wish to help. However, we need to spend money wisely and in ways to maximize the money we donate. We need to do a better job of making the local community aware of our financial support, volunteer support, and advocacy support. A clear road map to identify our priorities makes a lot of sense. 

I am on the lookout for new ideas to make the community more aware of the Knights. We should think about setting up Knights tables after Masses periodically in order to introduce our group to new members. We could also sponsor donut breakfasts periodically after Masses. We should advertise our new webpage when it is established in the church bulletin. I plan to ask Fr. Steve for permission to add an insert into bulletins one week to summarize the many things the Knights do for the church and community.

I am also hoping to continue to create commonalities with the Columbiettes. 

Below are items we have worked on successfully since last July. This is an impressive list and there is much to be proud of.