Nine Month Anniversary of Rapidan District Going Online!

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Linda Bradshaw

9 candle cake (free clip art)

From the Desk of the 2014 Lt. Governor and Publicity Chairperson of the Rapidan District:

Nine months ago today, the Rapidan District went “online” with a temporary, unofficial website and associated Facebook page to “test the waters” to see if such a website would be of value to Ruritans. As of this writing on November 3, 2014, there have been 4941 “hits” on that unofficial website.

On August 22, 2014, the “official” website (this one) went online and the content of the original website was copied over to this site. As of today, there have been 1106 “hits” on this new website. Combined, that is a total of 6047 “hits!”

We would like to thank our readers for coming to visit our website(s) and encourage everyone to sign up to be a “follower” of this official website. You can do so by entering your email in the “Follow this by email” text box in the right sidebar near the bottom of this website. By “following” (or subscribing) new posts will automatically appear in your email inbox. Doing this will give you the convenience of being able to keep up-to-date on what is going on without having to physically come to the website every few days to see what is going on! We would like to encourage our readers to “bookmark” or “save” this website and use this one to keep abreast of what is happening in the District.

We would like to discontinue using the original one in the near future. We have noticed, however, that the original one is continuing to be used frequently by our readers, so we will not be de-activating it until we are more confidant that people have become comfortable with coming to this new one instead of the old one. We have posted on the original website a notice urging the readers that arrive there to come to this website.

We would also like to take this opportunity to encourage all of the twenty-four local Ruritan Clubs in the Rapidan District to send us press releases and notices about their events and meetings before AND after they are held so we can help spread the word about our great clubs! This is a great opportunity to help promote awareness and increase attendance and membership in our clubs!

Rapidan District Convention Scheduled for November 29, 2014

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Linda Bradshaw

Convention (free clip art)

The Annual Rapidan District Convention is scheduled for Saturday, November 29, 2014 from noon to 9pm. The Convention will be held at the Holiday Inn at 1901 Emmett Street North in Charlottesville, VA.

The Rapidan District Convention is the time that all twenty-four clubs in the Rapidan District come together to vote on important issues that affect all the clubs. We hold silent auctions, and peruse informational exhibits.

All members of Ruritan are welcome to attend the convention! Tickets must be purchased for admission to the installation banquet.

This is an opportunity to meet the Ruritans that are running for a National office and hear what they have to say about their hopes for the future of our club and how they plan to help Ruritan National accomplish our goals on a National level.

applause (free animated gif)

We learn about what the other clubs in the District have accomplished. We recognize, thank, and applaud the outstanding achievements of the clubs and individual club members during awards presentations and ceremonies.

Examples of the individual club members awards handed out during the District Convention include perfect attendance awards and Ruritan of the Year awards.

awards (free clip art)

The local clubs are asked to send two delegates to the convention. These delegates represent the clubs during the business meeting when we vote on the issues brought before the District Board. These issues can affect the future of all the clubs in the district.

We elect and meet the next year’s District Lieutenant Governor. We thank the outgoing District Governor for his service.

The convention is when our club officers receive important news and training to help make sure that they are up-to-date on the information they need to properly do the jobs to which they have been elected.

exhibits (free clip art)

This is also a time for fellowship; to rub elbows, exchange ideas, and break bread with members of other local clubs that you may not have met before!

When attendees arrive at the convention they check in at the registration tables. At that time they are given a program that details what event is happening where, and at what time. We sell advertising space in the program to help defray the cost of holding the convention.

silent auction (free clip art)

The more ads that we sell, the less expensive the admission tickets will be!

(Note, admission ticket prices have been set at $12.50 as of 10/30/14)

Proceeds from those sales help cut the admission price for the people who come to this very important and fun event.

In addition to helping to defray the costs and reduce the ticket price to the Convention, local clubs receive a 20% rebate from the ads that they have purchased/sold. Selling program ads directly benefit the local clubs! The rebate checks will be awarded to the clubs during the convention.

speeches (free clip art)

From our District Program Book Chairperson, Fulton Payne: Now is the time for our local Ruritan Clubs to start selling program book ads for our Convention Program Book.

The ads are $80 for a full page, $40 for a half page, $20 for a quarter page and $10 for an eighth page. As an extra bonus and incentive for businesses to purchase ads, any business that purchases an ad will receive a free link to their business website for one year on our official website, http://www.rapidandistrictruritan.com.

Please ask the purchaser of the ad to make the check payable to “Rapidan District Ruritan” and send the check and ad to: Fulton Payne, 855 Deerfield Rd., Louisa VA, 23093. His telephone number is 434-589-8797. Checks without the ad or ads without the check will not be accepted.

The Cabinet asks each Club to take an ad for their Club, any size, so we could have 100% participation for the District. Please have your ads “camera ready.” Please provide new copies of your ads since we will be unable to use previous ones. Fulton will be glad to assist you with this if you need help. If you would like to e-mail your ads you can send them to Fulton at esp@embarqmail.com. The absolute deadline to submit ads is October 1st. Ads received after that date will not appear in the 2014 Program Book.

Please plan to attend our convention, and help our Rapidan District have a great 2014 convention and a great year in 2015! If you are planning to attend the convention, please call Al MacDonald, District Governor ASAP at 804-556-5233.

Veterans To Be Honored at the Ruritan National Convention in January 2015

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Linda Bradshaw

The following is copied and pasted from the Facebook Page “I AM Ruritan.” It is being copied here to accommodate Ruritan members that do not use Facebook. It is our hope to use this medium to spread the word (about the announcement) so that other Ruritan members that are veterans will learn about this event, and ask your club secretary to go into MMS to ensure that your military status is correct in the MMS records.

Are you one of Ruritan’s many Veterans? Are you planning on coming to Greensboro to the 2015 Ruritan National Convention? Remember that our members’ military records pull directly from our Member Management System (MMS). Make sure your veteran status is up to date in the MMS so we can properly honor you in Greensboro. If you aren’t sure how to use the MMS – one of your club members or the national office staff will be happy to help you. There are two important items: whether you are active or inactive; and which branch of the military you served in.

Note: if you are a member of the Rapidan District AND a veteran, if you are not already listed on our web page “Honoring our Veterans” we would love to include YOU on that page. We want your name, the branch of the service you were in, the year you started, the year you ended, and which Ruritan Club in the Rapidan District you are in. We would also love to have a photograph of you to include in the the listing (preferably in uniform at the time you were in the service.) You can give us the required information by using this contact form below (if you have a photograph, let us know how to contact you so we can make arrangements to get a copy of the photograph from you):

[contact-form subject=’Rapidan Ruritan Veteran%26#039;s information contact form’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Telephone Number’ type=’text’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

Three Months Old, Still Alive and Kicking!

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Linda Bradshaw

From the desk of the Lt. Governor:

Three Month Anniversary Cake

Today is the third month anniversary of this website! This website was created February 3, 2014, as an “unofficial, temporary, test” website for and about the Ruritan Rapidan District. The intention was to “test the waters” to see if a more permanent website would be a good idea.

This is a good time to share some site statistics, (for those readers that thrive on statistics) to demonstrate the value of a website such as this.

On the one month anniversary of the website, a post discussed some statistics of the site, and shared that there had been 671 “hits” (visits, how much “traffic”) to the website.

On the two month anniversary of the website, there were 1332 “hits.”

Blog stats as of 5-3-14

Now, on the third month anniversary of the website, as of the writing of this post, at 3:42 pm on May 3, 2014, there have been 2,088 hits!

There are several charts available to me, as the webmaster, that shows details of things such as how people found the website. Copies of those charts can be found below. All of these charts were pulled around 10:00 a.m. today.

The first chart shown below is shows the titles of the top posts and pages since the website was created. You will notice that one of the most popular pages is the page that lists the Spotsylvania County Ruritan Clubs. This suggests that people are using this website to help locate Ruritan Clubs in their communities. This also suggests that if each local club had their own website, that the people that came to this website would have been able to click on the club’s link to get more information about the club. This supports the idea that each local club would derive benefits from having their own website.

Ruritan’s Rapidan District

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Tag Archives: Rapidan District website

Rapidan District Convention Scheduled for November 29, 2014

Veterans To Be Honored at the Ruritan National Convention in January 2015