New Mexico Organization

[SamD]

Tom,
Do you have a list of who is doing what here in NM?

Methinks we need one, we aren't growing fast enough.
Maybe we need to get the UMWA in here to show us how to get organized. 

Sam

[twh731]

Heck Sam, I don't even know what I'm doing half the time.  Just kidding.  I'm not sure how to do such a thing as what you're asking about.  Basically when I get an event or gunshow or something I ask for help and, so far, have been getting it.  A couple of you guys have even gotten AS event host applications.  Don't know how to actually schedule people to do what we are all doing.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.  Tom

[SamD]

Actually you are  just a bit too modest Tom.

Tom setup the first New Mexico Appleseed less than a year ago, Sept 2008.
We met at Raton, with Atticus from Virginia, PHenry from Florida and ashrn03 from Texas.
Don't know about the rest of the bunch but I was a bit overwhelmed. Texas was far enough but folks coming in from Va and Fla to teach us?  No one paid them, they were not grumbling, they wanted to be here, and they were here for us. They taught us some great shooting skills and more importantly for me some great American Heritage.   Met some good people, made some great friends.

I digress,
Tom has been our State coordinator since before day 1. We get funny ideas about shooting somewhere and then we make Tom set it up for us.    we get ideas about advertising and make Tom get us tables at gun shows   
Now we are developing our second generation of Appleseeders. The first Generation of NM Appleseeders are getting  "on the trail", repaying the investment that  Atticus, PHenry and Paul made in us.  There have been others too that drove and flew here to teach us, AZGROMIT, AZRedhawk44, Longshot and Fred.  We owe them a lot and all they asked was that we pass it on.

Tom is still out scrounging ranges and tables at gun shows as does BlueFeather, who also writes good material to make us better instructors, and TaosGlock who is our resident photographer and idea guy, Paul has a state of his own to operate but still finds time to come to NM to support us and teach and be a good friend. Me I just talk a lot.

A high proportion of you are IIT's, a heavy commitment with serious responsibilities, but I want more from you 
Since we are getting big, we need some organization, to keep a better handle on what we are doing and how we do it, what works and what doesn't.  Take on the stuff that need sdone so we can bring more people into teh program.  I am going to ask all of you at yourselves and make an inventory of your skills, abilities and experience and see how they can help Appleseed. 

We need to get organized. There are some things we don't know how to do well, and some we can't do at all.  Spots that we need to fill so Appleseed in New Mexico can keep growing.   
Writers who can do, small 1 page articles, advertisements, stuff like that.
People that can record what we are doing from one week to the next, who we have talked to and not.
Marketing and advertising.  We need people that are good at convincing gunshops and sporting goods stores to post our literature and flyers. Someone who can talk a cigar store Indian out of his feathers to get us into ranges and clubs, people to write and invite politicians and influential people and convince them to come shoot with us and support us.  People that can seek out different organizations that might be friendly to Appleseed, inform them about the program and invite them to join with us in teaching a little American Heritage. People to hand out flyers at gun shows and on and on and on (someone that can get BlueFeather to make me some serious good mustache wax)

If you have some skills or even just an hour every now and then and want to keep the good word going, step up and grab a shovel.   If all you can do is play solitaire and write email, please come write email for us, If you travel the state, you might drop off a few flyers along the way.  Think about it folks, pass it on.   Contact any of the NM crowd, we will be glad to have you with us.

Sam