Happy New Year to all Torch Club members and their families and friends!

 
    Is it 2017 already?  One year closer to our 100th anniversary in 2024.  I wonder if anyone in the founding years thought Torch would survive 100 years. 

    The fact is, though, that it will take all of us working together to make the 200th anniversary a reality. Torch Clubs peaked in number of clubs (105) and members (5300) in 1960; at present we stand at 70 clubs and 2300 members.    
    Our advantage is that Torch has something society needs. Torch has always represented the opportunity to join others is a free and open discussion of things past and present, as well as some future tossed in.  Given the current political climate, Torch offers an oasis of reasonable and stimulating discourse, providing a respite from the hostile and angry exchanges that seem to be dominating our countries.

    Survival requires a strategy to continue to bring our message to our communities. The Board of IATC has committed our resources, as well as those of the Torch Foundation, to develop and implement a strategic plan to shore up our current clubs through our direct work with them and to strengthen them through a deliberate approach to enlarging club membership.  In addition, we are working on developing new clubs.  This dual approach has taken center stage in our collective efforts over the next seven years.

    One step in our efforts is to work on attracting members from all clubs to attend the 2017 Annual Convention this June being held in Kalamazoo, Michigan (please check out the ad for the convention in this issue).  In the recent past, our conventions have usually attracted attendees from only 30-40% of our clubs.  Attracting a broader range of clubs to our main national event, we expect, will both energize local clubs by connecting them to the national organization, and energize the national organization by connecting it to the local clubs.

    We would welcome comments and ideas from our readers about how we might make Torch stronger and more vibrant in the lives of our communities.

    The Board of IATC, at its winter board meeting in February, will be debating changing our annual conventions to a bi-annual convention, using the off years to hold conventions within each of our ten regions.  Our commitment to local club autonomy sometimes poses a challenge to the best interests of the full organization; regional conventions would make more visible the relationship between the IATC and the seventy individual clubs.

    Let’s hope that 2017 will be an exciting and positive year for Torch, our country, and the world.