* CHARITY * JUSTICE * BROTHERLY LOVE * FIDELITY

Important: In an effort to save money, time and a few trees, the lodge voted to discontinue the paper version of the Lodge Newsletter. The last issue will be sent at the end of March. The newletter will continue to be emailed and posted to our website. Make sure we have your email address so we can send them to you. A test email was sent out in Dec to all the members with an email address on record. If you did not get the email, we do not have your email address.

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We Need Your Time

OK Members, It' Time To Upgrade our Lodge
Each Sat Morning in Jan, 2012 San Antonio Elks Lodge
We have made a lot of progress, but we have a lot more to do

For every 4 hours of donated time, you will receive a free meal and a drink.

 Help Set Up and maintain a Facebook Page
 Improve our website
 Redesign the front entrance
 Help decorate the bar
 Help clear our vacant lot and haul brush to the dump
 Fix our floor buffer
 Paint the Lodge Room
 Organize the Kitchen
 Install Shelves in the Kitchen
 Paint the Handicapped Parking Spaces and fix broken signs
 Install Electrical Panel
 Remove broken neon lights
 Install a downspout on the end of the building
 Replace broken glass
 Replace carpet in the bar
 Replace faucets
 Fix the existing music system and speakers
 Review stuff stored in the room off the meeting hall
 Install low voltage lighting in the picnic table area
 Move stuff to the shed

And other projects you may have.

Pick a project you can help with and call by Thursday each week to let me know you are coming: Bruce Pinnell 210.372.0469

Jan 2012 Newsletter

Talk to Me
First let me apologize for the lecturing tone of this message, but I want to be sure you understand our situation and to get a response from YOU. Too many of you are ignoring our messages.

            We all are brothers and sisters of the San Antonio Elks Lodge and the lodge needs your help.  This message is targeted to those who haven’t been around the lodge or participated as a volunteer in our activities for some time.  Your age may prevent physical participation, but there are other ways you can help.  As long as you are a member we need your participation. We have a great lodge with a long history of service to the Veterans and Children of San Antonio, and we all have a role to play to insure that we can continue these noble efforts by insuring the financial security of the lodge. 

            Our fund raising efforts have been woefully short of our obligations for several years.  Without changes, the lodge will run out of money in a few years. It is not too late.  It may take us a few years to get us back on the right track, but we need to start now.  What will we tell our Veterans and Children if we do nothing and allow thelodge to close? If you care, show it.

            We are asking you to help by supporting our current fund raising efforts and new projects that we need to be involved in.  You can help by volunteering your time and expertise to help reduce our operating costs, or by participating at local events like Cornyval, Fiesta, and the Rodeo.  You can also help us reduce costs by providing us with your email address so we can send you the newsletter via email and also send you information about special meals and events we are supporting.

            While we may disagree about how we got into this situation or how we can fix it, but it’s critical that we come together now.  We need to aim the guns outside the fort, not at each other.  We need more team players and fewer spectators, detractors, and obstructionists.  There is no point complaining about the song the band is playing while the ship is sinking ala The Titanic.  We need to focus on the real problem and that is the lack of fundraising revenue and the personnel effort needed to make it work.  We have many ideas and opportunities to raise money and we hear more every day.  Our problem is that there is no one to take ownership of an idea and follow it through.  The core group of 10-15 members is totally exhausted, running the basic functions at the lodge like , planning meetings, veterans hospital visits, supporting the boy scouts, running  the Soccer Shoot and Hoop Shoot competitions, meeting Grand Lodge requirements, participating in clinics, managing the Sweetheart activities, attending conventions, mailing newsletters, managing membership renewals and follow-ups, recruiting new members, cleaning, bookkeeping, Audits, staff management, housekeeping, improvements, maintenance, preparing/serving meals, and running the bar. 

            Get involved, leverage your personal and/or business contacts to make a tax deductible donation to help the lodge reduce expenses, or rent our facility for meetings or celebrations.  Invite your friends and neighbors to our special meals or hamburger night.  Everyone has to eat.

            Brothers and Sisters know how to come together and put aside short term differences and deal with adversity.  The leadership of the lodge is actively engaged in many facility improvements to improve rentals and our ability to host special events at the lodge.  We plan to have many Open House events over the next year.  This will introduce many more people to the lodge and our community activities.  If you have any marketing contacts that can provide pro-bono assistance, let us know.

            Call or write to me if you want lend a hand ExaltedRuler@SanAntonioElks.com let us add you to our list of active supporters.

Richard Morales, Exalter Ruler

House Committee Report

The profitability of the bar has returned thanks to proper pricing and greatly improved attendance. We need more of your time on activities that help us raise money. I am not speaking to the 10 people that show up all the time, I am speaking to those able bodied members who rarely come to the lodge or only come for a meal or a beer. We want your help.
We have ideas and plans but we need your active participation to make it work.

Tom Lally, Marie Phillips, and I have been performing the duties as the house manager, and facility manager since April. These jobs are normally paid $1,400/mo. Tom and Marie took the late spring and early summer months and I have been active since October. We have put in 60-80 hours a week--hardly a part time effort. We are donating this time and expertise to making changes that will improve the usability and profitability of the Lodge. In return, The membership has approved a motion that the funds normally paid in salary, be used to improve the lodge and not to fund normal lodge operations. This amounts to a $10,000 donation from Tom Lally, Marie Phillips, and me. We need to add the value of all the volunteer labor donated in the last 90 days, plus the value of additional cash and equipment donations. We are glad to do it. The total contributions to the lodge in the last 90 days exceed $30,000. Thank You. We are seeking more support from our brothers and sisters to save the lodge.

Ed S. and Tom H doing the hedge while Paul H. wrestles a cedar to the ground. Meanwhile Fran is holding court and Tom L. is busy painting the 2nd bar.

We had a large crew organizing the shed.

A dozen volunteers came to the lodge on Saturday Dec. 17th to help make a difference.  Ed S. and Tom H. tamed our hedge and went through 2 chainsaws and a few chains (blades) doing it. Paul H. wrestled a large cedar tree and helped out on every project.  Our newest member, Basil F. help pull up a lot of small trees with my truck. We broke an 8,000 lb winch in the process.  Frank A. and Lance G. cut down the tall grass and small bushes using our industrial strength weed eater loaded with 1/8 inch wire rope. Tom L. painted the second bar and put a second coat on the member’s lounge.  Rose and Rose Ann organized the decorations for special events and cleaned out the office.  JJ, Ron A, Lance G., Tom H,. Ed S., and Paul H. reorganized the storage shed.  What a difference they all made. We need more participation to finish the job. We will do it again on Christmas Eve for those of you that want to get out of the house. I would particularly like to see more of the officers and some new faces at these events. Where are those new member that we recruited over the last 3 years. Call them and get them engaged.

RAFFLES 

We have several raffles going on- There is a Cruise to the Caribbean, a liquor basket raffle, a wine basket raffle, and a 50/50 raffle run by the House Committee. The $1 a day raffle has been discontinued and all the names from the book have been entered into the new 50/50 raffle. We filled out one ticket for each dollar you paid. If this is not acceptable you can get a refund, but we will need to take your tickets out of the jar first. The winner of the 50/50 raffle will be drawn at a special ceremony on a lodge night after the jar is full. The jar has over $200 in it now.

All members of the lodge has received 5 tickets to sell. While we have sold a lot of tickets, we have not heard from a lot of you. If you cannot afford to buy them yourself to give away, consider reciprocating with your neighborhood families that sell you cookies and candy every fall to raise money. You probably have no kids at home, but you buy them anyway. This is the same. Our communities need to support each other and this is only fair.

Please note the Volunteer Days every Saturday and call me by Thursday, any week, to let me know if you can lend a hand.  We still need a lot of volunteers to help with our ‘To Do List’ list posted on the Bulletin Board.  The next big things are:

-Clearing the vacant lot- we did a lot of damage this week but we need more chainsaws with operators to cut down the small trees and trim large branches.

-Finish painting the lodge room, the entries the bar office, and the handicapped parking spaces. I found the stencil for the wheelchair and we have the paint.

-Speaking of paint, we need to pick a new color for the outside of the lodge. Now that we can see the building with the hedges lowered, it's obvious that we need to make the front more appealing. If you know a designer, we need ideas. I will post the color choices on this web site and ask you to vote. Keep in mind that any color selection needs to blend with the colors of the two hotels next to us.

-We will be replacing the carpet in the two bars with tile, so if you have tiling skills and tools, call me. We will provide free coffee, pastry, sodas and lunch.  The work is only the morning so it will not ruin your day.  If you know anyone who owns a backhoe or a pole mounted chainsaw, see if they are willing to help us clear out some trees from our vacant lot.  We are making great progress cleaning up the lot. We need to clear the lot for more parking.  Also if any of you is an electrician, we would like to add power and lights to the storage shed.

-Thanks to the generous donations of Rollie, Dave Anderson, Tom Madison and Richard, we have been upgrading the audio/visual equipment at the lodge. This includes new TVs, new speakers, new wiring, new wireless mikes, and new switching equipment that will allow up to share many inputs with each of the TVs. This means that we can simultaneously display/play DVD's, MP3 music, Ipods, slide shows, satellite TV, Wii, and microphones though any speakers or TVs.

-We want to install a new Point of Sale (POS) in our bars and kitchen to improve financial controls, inventory control, reporting and interface with our accounting system to reduce clerical effort. I'm not sure if we will have enough money for this, but it is critical for our future.

John Johnson and Jeffery Hawley have made some very generous donations to the lodge in the form of kitchen equipment and supplies.  Several others took ornaments off the tree and wrote us a check.  The tree will be up through Jan, so you still have time to contribute. Julian's church The Church of God made a very generous donation of $500 to buy a refrigerator for the second bar. Bob and Mary Parker donated $25 for kitchen utensils.

Jack Huggins, along with the culinary expertise of Executive Chef Ray V. hosted a very successful Christmas dinner for large group from the Audie Murphy Veteran’s Hospital at the lodge.  They served a fabulous Chicken Fajita dinner with a special bread pudding for dessert.

Except for Lodge functions, the bar will be closed from Saturday to Tuesday in 2012. We have volunteer bartenders for Thursdays through Jan. thanks to Frank A., Robert P. Tom H.

Mark your calendar for the events we have planned for the next three months.  We need sponsors and volunteers for most of them to pull them off.  Let us know if you can help. See our calendar on www.sanantonioelks.com 

On Sunday, Jan 1st we will be open all afternoon and evening to watch the games, enjoy chili and hot dogs and $1 draft beer.  Bring all your leftovers from your New Year’s Eve party. We will be drawing for the winners of our wine and liquor basket raffles at half time of the last game of the day. 

On Jan 7th, please come out to Helotes Market Place Days and support your lodge (8AM to 5PM).  We will work in shifts.  We will be sharing information about the lodge with the community and selling Chicken Gumbo and Chili. 

On Friday’s in Jan we will have a, a BBQ Chicken dinner with all the fixin's, cilantro tequila lime fish tacos with guacamole, an Italian night, and we will end the month with a chicken fajita dinner.  We will start February with a very special Cuban night with Latin music featuring a roast pork dinner (slow cooked for 12 hours) with Cuban side dishes and special dessert;

We will be open Saturday and Sunday for the first 3 weekends in January to watch the NFL Playoff games as long as there are people in the lodge.  Let me know if you are coming. If you come, I will open the bar. If I am the only one there, I will close. We will start around 1PM each day.  We have had a good turnout the last two weeks.  We are offering $1 beer, $1 hot dogs, and free popcorn and 3 large screen TVs.