Mentor Program for New Members

It's soap box time again.

The American Daffodil Society, known better as ADS, has started a mentor program for new members that is destined to failure before it starts because of one reason, greed. The announcement stated that "ADS President Bob Spotts has made it a high priority to implement a mentoring program for all new ADS members." Other societies, such as the Lily Society does not have a formal mentor program because they are nice people and help each other naturally. The ADS has to be told to draw in their claws, and put asside the Meow Mix to help new members.

The announcement stated that "ADS membership has been declining over a long period of time and with an aging membership it has become critical that we do everything we can to keep our new members." It went on to say that "at present there is a trememdous fallout of members after the first year or two." That's a laugh. New members quit because they are excommunicated and not accepted by the society's leadership.

As a fairly new member myself, I found that during my first year I was welcome in a snotty sort of way, and talked down too. And because I won something, the next year that I come back, I was subject to all the nasty understatements, like, "so you're here to win all our ribbons again, are you?" And, "don't ask me to help you, you beat me last year." When I won the second year, I was discriminated against, and the leadership set out to destroy my credibility.

I'm sorry, I and at least two others I know of personally that were in the same situation as I, felt like hell because we didn't know anything about showing daffodils in spite of our wins. We still needed help, and we felt we were being punished because we won some measly blue ribbon. At the same time we knew for certain that the persons bad-mouthing us were the same ones that collected the ribbons for the most blue ribbons in the show from the year before. Worse of all, they were the local club leadership. So, what was our crime?

In the announcement it was stated, "we want to make our new members feel welcome so that they will become longtime members." To make new members feel welcome, the current ADS local leadership should take sensitivity training on how to be nice to people and not be so greedy about wanting all the ribbons for themselves. They should be trained to truly welcome new people, and not make them feel unwelcome just because they won some little lowly blue ribbon. I again am speaking from personal experience. I won a lot my first year showing daffodils, after a 45 year career of gardening and raising flowers, but not growing and showing daffodils. I was a good gardener, and daffodils were just one more variety that I grew well. Growing show quality daffodils is not that complicated for a good gardener. I was told that I was not supposed to know how to garden daffodils and that I was cheating by using someone else's flowers. Ahhh. . . , come on now. ADS doesn't have a lock on how to grow flowers.

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