As July 1 quickly comes upon us, I have been very busy preparing for the topmost post in our council. Fr. Thomas Lane Council of the Knights of Columbus in Renton, WA has 100+ members. There is much to do: council budget for the new fraternal year; creating a member survey to see if the council's programs are in the right direction; finding a solution to our growing storage problem; and lots more planning. Besides that, I've been part of 4th Degree honor guards wherever I can: Since attaining 4th Degree in May, I've been in full regalia at a Diaconal ordination in White Center, near Burien, Wa; 30th year anniversary for a Deacon in St. Anthony's parish and also a PGK of our council; and a funeral for a Sir Knight at a nearby council. I also attended my first Assembly meeting this month since becoming a 4th Degree member in may and managed to get myself voted into a 3-Year Trustee position, responsible for an annual audit of the Assembly's finances.
After moving the council's website (http://www.kofcrenton.org) from its previous hosting service to a more affordable one and redesigning the site in the process, I'm starting to lay the groundwork for a more collaborative site, using Joomla as the content management system. Since this was my first Joomla site, I decided to go with the newest version, 1.6. Producing the council's monthly newsletter is time-consuming and is a major expenditure to the council for postage and printing supplies. So, it's my goal to reduce the need for paper mailings as much as possible, and to get us to a point where the newsletter can have multiple contributors easily publishing the newsletter online may take a couple of months. My first move toward this is getting the Grand Knight and Financial Secretary's monthly message posted online in a Joomla blog-style article. From there, other portions of the newsletter can be created by many hands and published a lot easier than emailing around a Word document file, like the council has been doing in the past. We won't be able to completely eliminate a paper mailing, because many of our members do not have access to email. Many do not own a computer or do not see the advantage to being "online" for communication; especially those who grew up before computers were smaller than a room.
Thankfully, summer is a relatively slow period, in terms of council activities. In July, major activities for me, as Grand Knight, are overseeing the council's annual audit, planning a council picnic, attending my first K of C Summer Leadership Meeting, held in Wenatchee this year, and getting a yearly budget voted and approved by the council.
