By Abbie Sladick, Florida Regional Leader and Chair of the Growth Sub-Committee

Our 2020 Vision set out a bold goal – to grow from 8,000 to 20,000 members by 2020. You may wonder: why such a big goal? The answer is simple – because the need is great. We have yet to achieve gender equality around the world, and women and girls are still struggling and suffering. We want to grow so we can impact even more women and girls!

How will we get to 20,000 members? Can our existing chapters accommodate this much growth? One of DFW’s strengths is the small, intimate nature of our chapters, and we have no intention of changing that. We will meet our membership goal by growing the number of chapters across the U.S. This is how we have grown over the past 14 years – whether we had 20, or 200, or 400 chapters, each chapter retained its own uniqueness and intimacy.

Initially, we plan to expand the number of chapters as we have in the past – in a grassroots manner. Although we have had some national media exposure that led to growth surges, DFW has largely grown through word-of-mouth.  When we ask people how they heard about DFW, time and again they tell us that it was through a DFW member or friend.

That’s where you come in!

DFW members, like you, are passionate and committed to helping women and girls, and WE ALL LOVE DFW! That makes each and every one of us the perfect DFW ambassador. There will be other strategies that we will implement over time, but we will kick off our growth plan this year by harnessing the collective power of our 8,000 ambassadors across the U.S.!

We are calling this our “8,000 Ambassadors Campaign” and will officially launch it on March 8th — International Women’s Day. We encourage all of our chapters to:

• Schedule your March chapter meeting on International Women’s Day. We know this may not be possible for all chapters, but we would like to have as many chapters participate as possible.
• Tune in to a live Google Hangout on the evening of March 8th. DFW board and staff members will lead us in the Dinner Affirmation, discuss our featured grant, and share some exciting news!   You won’t want to miss it!
• Discuss, at your chapter meetings, how you can spread the word about DFW in your own area or even in other parts of the country. For example, do you have a friend in another state who might be interested in starting a chapter?
• If you cannot schedule your meeting on March 8th, use your regular March meeting to discuss DFW’s growth plan, watch the recording of the Google Hangout and brainstorm ideas!

We will be mailing an “8,000 Ambassadors Campaign” package to each chapter in late February with printed materials (rack cards, brochures) and ideas to help you spread the word. We will also have a press release template that you can share with your local news media, who will be looking for stories to cover for International Women’s Day.

Watch The Dish for more communications over the coming months, and be sure to share your chapter’s success stories by emailing media@togetherwomenrise.org.