Hope your week is off to a good start. I am sending this message out to everyone because some of you are not on Facebook or you haven’t joined the CCH Facebook Group. Therefore, you haven’t seen my posts lately regarding yearly membership dues. Now, like with any growing Humanist/Atheist group, we are non-profit but we rely on funding to help create and prepare events for our members – and use funds to help promote and market the group to gain memberships for us and the American Humanist Association. Up until now, I and a select few members have been footing the bill for some of the events, including supplies for the Light the Night fundraisers and buttons with our CCH logo on it – and the cchnj.net website and the Meetup group. All this adds up at the end of the year. I have recently applied for a grant from The AHA for funding to help promote our group. I was informed that it will take some time before it is announced who gets the grants. In the meantime, for our group to continue with its work and special events (including our special Spring event) we will be counting on you, the dedicated members of CCH to help us out. Now, because we are new to the Humanist community, we have yet to establish ourselves as a dominant force that deserves to be recognized for its achievements. So, our yearly membership fee is only $20 a year. (If you are on Meetup – It is important to keep that site going because it helps organize events better and the AHA recommends keeping it. ) This is why we have monthly dues on there in the amount of $2.00, to keep Meetup up and running. To sum it up, we rely on donations and dues to keep our group alive. It is quite a struggle when a small group like ours, with such big ideas and plans, cannot carry them out for lack of funding. This is why I am announcing that starting Monday, January 13th, 2014 every member of CCH will have to pay a membership due of $20 a year. This applies to anyone who has joined Camden County Humanists on Meetup. As to where to send the checks, we are currently working on setting up a P.O. Box for CCH. This will happen either on January 1st or January 8th. I will let you know which day. It depends on whether or not I have the money needed to do it. Following the collection of membership dues, a bank account will be open for The Camden County Humanists. All checks will be deposited in this account and used to fund the group and it’s activities. After this is taken care of, I will open up a business PayPal account for those who find it easier just to pay through that service. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments regarding this. Thank you very much for your time. William Flynn