Attendees: Joe Kraut, Monte Mayer, Lloyd Levine, Don Feldman, Bill Singer, Jerry Farris, Maxwell Colon, Steve Zeitz, Warren Dolny, David Zwerin, Mike Berman, Richard Lee, Sheldon Turetsky, Ed Goldwasser, Mrs. Bailor, Marvin Secum, Ben Podtor, Sheldon Ohren, Paul Bernstein, Greg Lee, Bruce Katis, Israel Gotay, Harvey Charter, Joseph Lubell, Bob Zweiman, Jason Kaatz
Staff: NED Herb Rosenbleeth; DOO Larry Richardson; Nikki Salzman
Subject: Addressing Challenges to JWV’s Survival
- Need to have active programs in your Post. Some examples:
- Award grants to high school students
- Provide honor guards at funerals
- Provide volunteers at Stand Down events
- Volunteer to do charity work during Christmas – this is something that’s very appreciated and can be difficult for our Christian friends and neighbors to do
- Be highly visible in the community – especially the Jewish community
- Reach out to young people - the local boy scouts, girl scouts, and JROTC
- Do good works for all veterans – not just the Jewish ones
- Seek out publicity
- Contact the local newspapers and magazines
- Contact local Jewish journals and Federations
- Advertise when you have a speaker coming to a meeting
- Send in letters to the editor about current events relating to veterans – tag yourself as a member of JWV when you send in these letters
- Feed people at meetings
- Hand out JWV business cards to people
- We should be required to carry blank applications on us at all times – if you don’t have one on you, you’ll have to pay a fine
- Spend time in the military bases and hospitals - The more visibility we have there, the more these active duty people will think about us and be interested in us
- Get involved in their religious services
- Host events on the bases
- Get more patrons involved in the organization
- NEC officers need to go out and visit all of their local Posts
- We need everyone to get the necessary information from our organization - NECs are part of this communication channel
- We need to certify more service officers – if we’re providing a service that can help veterans, it will put us right in the forefront of everything with people
- Business membership
- Great for JWV and the business
- Lets customers know that this business supports veterans
- Gives them special JWV business cards
- Reach out to a major league team
- Have a veterans day at the field. Encourages members to be there and gets our name out there
- We need to start appealing to younger people
- Include interesting topics on the National Facebook page
- There’s less and less Jews even joining the military – if they’re not joining, we’re definitely not going to exist
- We need to have some kind of national campaign encouraging young Jews to join the military, and letting them know that Jewish people are Patriots
- We don’t have enough young people out there looking for us
- Contact Base Chaplains to get access to the right people, to get the opportunity to make a presentation to the right people
- We have a responsibility to the Jewish community – we need to make sure that more Jews are interested in service
- We have to communicate better to the Jewish community that Jews have an obligation to serve their nation
- We also need to let the Jewish military know where to find us
- We need to approach people when they get in the military and before they join the military
- We need to advertise so they know where to find us
- We need to make sure that our image is one of people who have served in ALL wars not just World War II
