07/18/2019
On Tuesday, June 4, 2019 the JCI Indianapolis Board of Directors called an important member meeting to discuss the future of the JCI Indianapolis chapter. At that meeting, those in attendance voted unanimously to close the chapter.
The decision was made for a few reasons:
- Our membership has been steadily declining for quite some time now, and we had been nearing the minimum number of members needed to keep our charter. (At the end of Q2 at the end of June, we did fall below that threshold, although the decision had already been made.)
- Financially, we had been struggling for some time to continue to operate the chapter.
- We were having trouble demonstrating the true value of membership, which in turn made it incredibly difficult to recruit for the organization, especially in a passionate way. (I don't want to speak for everyone here, but there were various levels of these sentiments expressed by many.)
This was not an easy decision to make, but we did collectively feel that it was the right call.
The Silver Lining....
There was a consensus that we still wanted to make Let's Wine About It continue to happen. We all love this event and the impact it has on the community and did not want to see that go away. As that event has been heavily funded by the Foundation in the past, we reached out to them and got approval to run LWAI through the Foundation in 2019 (and likely into the future).
If you would like to be involved with this event, please join the Planning Committee if you haven't already. The existing JCI Member's Only Group has been converted to a planning space for LWAI. You can find it by visiting the new, official LWAI page here: Let's Wine About It
There will be many changes over the coming months to the website, email, Facebook groups, etc. to account for the closing of the chapter.
Thank you to everyone for your hard work and involvement over the years. It's been a good run, everyone - let's still be friends!
