I learned recently that the evening Board Games group is no longer meeting, although the daytime group continues to meet. There are also a couple of other groups that have lost membership: Scrabble and Reader’s Theater. Our most popular groups continue to thrive: Art and Architecture, Film Fans, Great Decisions, Travel, both of our Dining Out groups, and all of our book groups, although we lost one of those last year. It seems that once a group has lost members, usually for a variety of personal reasons, it loses momentum. There is no hard and fast rule about how many members a group must have in order to continue, and I have left it up to the members to decide if and when they want to disband their group.

Since I have been Interest Groups Director, I have tried – unsuccessfully – to start several new groups. I don’t know if it is because people are too busy to add anything new to their activity schedules or because we haven’t come up with a sufficiently interesting topic for a group or because our members are more focused on our mission these days. So I’d like to put the question to our membership: What do you think about the state of our interest groups? Are you satisfied with the ones we have? Do we need some new ones? Are all of the groups in which you participate still meeting your needs and desires? Please give me some input so I can do a better job for the branch. Thanks!