Maine Elks Association
Public Relations Committee Newsbriefs -08/28/2008

Maine Elks Association Newsbriefs

MEA Holds 8^th Annual Youthfest Program

On August 23, 2008, the Maine Elks Association held its 8th annual Youthfest program for disabled and disadvantaged children at the Waterville Elks Lodge #905. The purpose of the event was to provide children with special needs with an opportunity to have a day of fun, at no cost to their families!

It was a perfect day for the event, and the event attracted 115 children from across Central Maine. This was the highest number of children to attend the event since it began in 2001. Some of the activities included carnival type games as well as a visit from Slugger the Seadog, Smokey Bear, and McGruff the Crime Dog. An obstacle course, dunk tank, basketball, bowling, and plenty of food and music were enjoyed by all. In addition, There were four fire trucks, the MEA Drug Awareness Trailer, and the MEA Diabetes/Hypertension Van. Demonstrations were also conducted by a local Karate team, and the K-9 unit of the Fairfield Police Department. The feature entertainment was a magic show featuring “The Steelgraves,” One of New England’s top magical acts. The activities and the event were run by volunteers from the Maine Elks Association and Maine State Emblem Clubs.

CLMS Program to Accept ELMS Conversions

For those Lodges that are still using the ELMS program to maintain their membership data, a one-time conversion to the Chicago Lodge Membership System is being offered by Grand Lodge. The conversion process is ready now, and turnaround time is running at around 7 days. This is all in preparation for Grand Lodge’s new requirement to use the CLMS system by October 31, 2008.

Thanks to Ed Sanman of Idaho and Mike Clark of Texas for their part in helping our staff setup this intricate conversion process and for dedicating many yet to come hours converting your data, we are now offering a ONE-TIME “ELMS” to CLMS conversion option to migrate your Active and In-active members, the Widows and the Candidates to the CLMS database format.

Additionally, we are continuing work on enhancements within CLMS that address the needs many “ELMS” users and others have expressed over the past months. Take advantage of the time limited offer and make the move, leaving behind costly annual fees and support charges you are now paying unnecessarily since there is no cost to you for using CLMS, for updates or for use of support services through coordinators or the central helpdesk.

Secretaries…to start the conversion process, consider whether you will be maintaining ELMS and CLMS for a short time in parallel - if so you will need to keep careful records of the changes you make to ELMS while your files are being processed. You will need to implement this when you upload your data files. Once you do the CLMS import, you will need to carefully enter all of the data you had been entering into ELMS while your data was being converted by our team. To start the process, provide details about your ELMS program and your contact data, click here for the ELMS conversion dashboard menu!

Once you upload your information form and the required data, you should receive details about the processed file you can download and import into CLMS version 1.101.306 or later.

Plan carefully since this offer is time-limited and will only be extended to each Lodge on a one-time basis.

Although nothing is definite at this time, Chicago is entertaining the possibility of adding MAPS to the CLMS conversion  package in the near future.

Remember that every Lodge will be required to report their November 1, 2008 membership reports via CLMS, so make sure you have CLMS installed and your data is ready to go prior to 10/31/2008.

If you have news or information of interest to the members of the Maine Elks Association, please send your articles to Public Relations Director Wayne Cotterly at meapr@fairpoint.net for inclusion in the MEA Calendar, Newsbriefs, and/or Website. Also, if you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please send an e-mail to Public Relations Director Wayne Cotterly at meapr@fairpoint.net. In addition, if you know of someone who would like to be added to this list, please have them forward their e-mail address to the same address. All information provided has been read and approved by the MEA State President.