Mensa is a Do-It-Yourself Society
Now,
how often have I heard that before?
Why do members insist that Mensa is a Do-It-Yourself Society, and often resist vigorously any attempts Mensa makes at doing it for them? If it's all about Doing It Yourself, for what exactly am I paying £40 a year?
Back in the early 90s, when I was but a humble LocSec, I was asked to give an after-dinner speech for my local Rotary club. I asked the British Mensa office if they could produce some handouts or publicity materials, and I never heard anything back. In time-honoured tradition, I did it myself. But hold on a minute — if I was prepared to go and do the speech, why couldn't the Head Office of this large and well-known organisation at least help me out a bit?
I became Treasurer of British Mensa in 1999. Our office, which is a little smaller than the American Mensa office but similar in many ways, was essentially for marketing and recruitment. The social organisation was run entirely by the volunteer members, with little or no help from the office.
Shortly before I became Treasurer, one of our members organised a gathering, which was a social success — and a financial mess. Numbers were miscalculated and mistakes made with hotel bookings. Mensa loaned the organiser thousands of pounds, which were never repaid. As well as the money, Mensa lost one of our best organisers; he left the society under a cloud of allegations of financial misconduct.
Why? Because he'd been left to do it himself.
At that point I decided to see how the Mensa administration could be used to help the members in Doing It Themselves. Not to take over the social organisation, but to support members by taking on some of the boring tasks and the difficult bits.
I started with the finances. A gathering can have a budget of several thousands of pounds. That's a lot in relation to most people's personal finances. I knew people who had involved their personal money in a gathering and had suffered a loss, one they could ill afford. My starting point was to suggest that the organisation underwrite the cost. The office would take the bookings and make the payments, and as long as the organisers had done a decent job on their costings, the office would fund any loss.
We did, "we" being the British Mensa office.
As a result, the Mensa administration now does the accounts for most British weekends. The result is that an organiser no longer need fear losing personal money, and also cannot be open to allegations of having done anything wrong with Mensa members' money — because the administration has the proof.
We followed up with more services from the office. Display equipment is expensive, and nobody is going to buy a display stand for one or two gatherings. But Mensa can buy it — and ship it to gatherings, complete with promotional materials, posters, colour photos and Power Point presentations. Our stand is usually seen in the lobby of the hotel where any gathering takes place.
The Mensa office has contacts with printers who know our requirements. We can negotiate rates and payments and pass the savings on. We now undertake to print the programme for most gatherings.
As the impetus grew, the staff involved became more proficient at the whole thing. Most members hosting a gathering are doing it for the first time, or with only limited experience. But our staff is now involved with a number of events every year. We print up badges for the attendees, having bought the equipment to do so. We negotiate hotel rates because we have experience at it. We often arrange to use the office mailing list to send a circular to members in the region where a gathering is to take place. And, having achieved a pool of expertise, we're working on a handbook of advice for organisers. Finally, we've made funds available to support certain events — what could be called "intellectual" events — and for some weekends we pay for a speaker from central funds, to give an extra draw. We don't expect the money to be repaid — call it a gift from Mensa to the members at the larger gatherings. (Again, "we" refers to the Mensa office, not the British Mensa Committee or the author personally.)
Some people would say that only volunteers can provide what is wanted within Mensa. Well, I would call that a disservice to our staff. These are people who work hard for Mensa, and spend their working lives thinking about, communicating about what is uniquely Mensa. They can often have as much as or more understanding of Mensa than the members. But we are not talking about the staff's providing services at all; what we have managed to do in British Mensa is have staff supporting and helping volunteers to provide services.
So what has this meant for volunteers?
The volunteers are still the people, the members who decide what events they are going to organise, what will appear on the programmes, how and when gatherings will happen. None of the help available is compulsory. Event organisers can go it alone and Do It Themselves entirely. Or they can pick and choose from the assistance on offer. Accepting help with the accounts doesn't force them to take our printing services or display stands.
The volunteer
organisers make the Mensa social scene what it is — quirky, individual,
warm, welcoming and distinctly Mensa-flavoured. I wouldn't want to change
that. The trick is to provide professional help, while allowing the volunteers
to still be the ones in control.
But Mensa isn't just a little social club any more. It's a large organisation, with paid staff, an internationally recognised name and considerable resources. I can't think of a better use for those resources than helping and supporting the volunteers within Mensa.
Deborah Coates lives in Sheffield, England. She has been a member of Mensa since 1976, Local Secretary of her hometown group and, since 1998, British Mensa Treasurer. This article, written by Deborah personally, does not necessarily reflect the views of the British Mensa Committee.