Tortoise Family in Awesome Contest!

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Melissa Coakley

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Hello,
My name is Melissa. My fiance Bill Murray is president of the Florida Turtle & Tortoise Club. We are very active tortoise fans - and now we are in a huge wedding photography contest on Facebook. The winner (who gets the most votes) gets a $7,000 wedding photography package. Of course, we'd love to save money on our wedding (so we can buy more tortoises!!). Will you please vote for us if you have a Facebook account? You can't miss our photo - it is the only one with a tortoise in it (our 20 year old spur-thigh Sherman).

The contest only runs today and tomorrow (you can vote 1 time each day).

Here is the link:

http://apps.facebook.com/contestsap...jp7Im1pbiI6MjF9fSwidXNlcl9pZCI6IjUwMzYzNDgifQ


Thank you so much! Melissa & Bill
 

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Yvonne G

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Hi Melissa:

Welcome to the Tortoise Forum!!

I hope you and Bill stick around and participate in the Forum. You look like you would be interesting members to have in our little family.
 

dmarcus

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Welcome to the forum...

I agree with Yvonne and hope you and Bill stick around...
 

Melissa Coakley

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Thank you everyone! I can't believe I just found this forum :)

Is anyone else involved in a turtle/tortoise club? We are working on some new ideas to drive membership but it has been very difficult lately.

We keep a nice variety in our home. Redfoots, yellowfoots, hermanns, leopards, and Sherman our spur-thigh have the run of the backyard (each sectioned off). We also have a few others inside right now (pancakes, elongated). Along with some turtles: I have recently been really focused on North American woods and 1 super sweet 3 toed box.

Melissa
 

Yvonne G

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I started a chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club in my town many years ago, and was their secretary, newsletter editor and eventually president for the whole time I was a member. I got so tired of having to do all the work by myself that I got burned out and quit the club. I haven't been associated with any club since then, but I do operate a turtle and tortoise rescue from my home.

The best way we found for attracting new members is to find out when events are happening in your town and prepare a display for the event. This usually means months-in-advance planning, as the vendor tables are signed up in advance. We usually chose to display at functions where the vendor tables were free, such as the Home Show (a big three day event at the fair grounds that show cased home improvement stuff), the Street Fair (a Friday night summer time event where every kind of vendor imaginable lined up along a three or four block area) or even pet fairs and pet adoption events. Another way to meet the public is to ask a big pet store in your area (Like Pets Mart) if you can stage a display for some Saturday in their store, or right outside the door to the store.

At these events, you would have many, many free hand-outs of turtle/tortoise care sheets, pages for kids to color (turtles of course), maybe you can even spring for buying something to hand out for free, like pencils or visors with your club name on them (Oriental Trading Company). And naturally, you would have quite a big stack of your club's business cards to give out.
 

Melissa Coakley

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Great advice - thank you Yvonne! We do all the reptile shows (so we have stacks of newsletters, and custom pens, and care sheets, and other things. We also do lots of events at the nature preserve where our meetings are held (and yes, they are so much work). It just seems like the same few members show up every month. We are the only turtle/tortoise club in FL and we've been around for decades. Bill took over as president about 4 years ago and it has been tough. I am the president of a regular herp society and it is very easy to find interested speakers, but it is close to impossible to get speakers to commit for turtle club. The meetings are a lot of fun, I'd just love to see the club flourish. :)
 

dmmj

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I work publicity for my chapter and I basically post on Craigslist I post on this forum, I contact newspaper and tv channels and ask if they would run the announcements in any free space hey may have.
 
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