Make it easy to join

The Optimist Club of Waterloo, Illinois has a new website. It was built with a WordPress theme by a professional web designer and allows visitors to not only see what activities the club engages in, but also to register online and buy tickets for the large events. It is organized in a way that gives you every opportunity to be a participant in the activities offered by the Optimist Club.

Take a look at the Activities page as an example. There is something for participants to do every month of the year.

Next, head over to the Scholarship page and you are able to download an application for you or your child to complete.

Scroll down on any page and you'll even see a widget asking you for a donation to the Waterloo Skate Park and a thank you for JV's Bar and Grill for years of great food and service. There are also widgets displaying videos from Optimist International and optimistic quotes and thoughts of the day.

However, with all of these wonderful calls to action, they have perhaps missed some of the most basic elements of engagement:

• When does the club meet?
• Is there a cost? 
• How do  I join? 

To be fair, there is a contact page where one might ask such questions, but it is an impersonal form with a pesky captcha phrase needed in order to complete. It seems a shame to have created such an informative website and yet still be unapproachable.

Monday morning tip: Please take a look at your website today and make certain that your club is as welcoming to new member volunteers as you are to participants in your activities. Make it easy to visit and join your Optimist Club.

Your fellow members will thank you for the help and future generations will thank you for the legacy of service. 

If you would like to visit the Waterloo Optimist Club, they meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays, 6:30 p.m., JV's Downtown Bar and Grill, 117 N. Main Street.