Tim McCormick
Spring has sprung, and all around us, things are growing—including traffic, developments, and property appraisals! The same holds true inside the Ranch. While not yet officially up to half of the final buildout of Robson Ranch Denton, we are bursting at the seams, and all clubs are getting much larger.
The Republican Club has been doing its best to address massive growth. We started around 20 years ago, but things are much different than back then. Like most Robson clubs, we were a small, neighborhood group oriented around a common interest. Fast forward, and now we’re a club of approximately 800 members!
You can’t operate the same way for a neighborhood group and a club with 800 members. You need more structure. Policies need to be in place, people expect more information and service, and if you can’t deliver, they’ll likely decide to spend their time and energy somewhere else—even if it has nothing to do with what the club does. For goodness sake, we’re almost all retired and want to enjoy ourselves!
So how has the Republican Club adapted? We have done a complete makeover of the club!
At the time of this writing, we are about to vote on a new set of proposed bylaws that restructures our leadership. We are putting in place things to promote continuity from year to year and additional financial safeguards as our dues (still only $10!) bring in higher sums for our treasury. These are all things that aren’t very sexy but are important for the administration of the club.
From a customer/member perspective, we’re working on information, service, efficiency, and branding. A shout-out to David Spies who helped us by providing numerous logo options for us to choose from. We now have more committees attending to more concerns of the membership. However, our single biggest endeavor has been our new website RRRepublicanClub.com. We have over 90 web pages of information available to our members. Much of the website is accessible to non-members, and a portion can only be accessed by our members. We can now conduct surveys of our members, send out emails to subgroups, have a monthly calendar showing all that is upcoming, take credit card payments for dues and activities, have forums, and many other elements. Yes, there is still room for growth and improvement, but we’ve made great strides.
The most important thing we have done is to get many more members involved. We have loads of fun but also do charity work and, of course, being a Republican club, get involved politically. So, whether you want to help folks in need or learn more about how things work in Texas politics or just join the men or women (Liberty Belles) at a happy hour, we are providing a place for you to plug into. And to think, Robson Ranch Denton isn’t even halfway built out! Regular meetings are the first Wednesday of the month in the clubhouse at 7 p.m. Other gatherings are posted on the website calendar. Come join us!