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Chapter Building and Action Strategies
Sample Recruitment Letter
Letter to Lapsed Members
(from the chapter’s membership
chair
or the chapter president)
Dear Professor________________
[name], our membership secretary, has asked me to contact you regarding your lapsed membership. Keeping up our AAUP membership is vital to our effectiveness. The greater our numbers, the more the administration knows it’s not wise to ignore us. Equally important, [person’s name], is that we’re all the poorer by your absence.
When colleagues like you are with us, others who might be too timid or too indifferent to join will enroll, too. Our numbers give strength to our position nationally as well as locally. It is plain political common sense that colleagues working together muster more clout and can be more effective than disparate individuals.
The AAUP has been going to bat for us nationally for ninety years. Tenure, due process, the annual salary survey, academic freedom, and shared governance; we’ve all benefited from those who’ve paid the bill for us already, and who continue to do so. My dues area part of my obligation to the professoriate, and I hope you feel yours are, too. They’re my contribution to my profession now and in the future.
It is critical that we sustain the AAUP as the forum through which we work for the policies and practices that will enable us to do our work well. We won’t always agree on every AAUP position and initiative, but it is vital that we keep the AAUP conversation engaged with the full range of faculty judgment. If you have some concern or frustration with an aspect of the AAUP, I hope you will return to the conversation and work with us to improve ideas and activism.
I’ve taken the liberty of enclosing a member ship application. If you would like to renew your membership, please fill out the enclosed application and return it – along with your dues payment – to me at [insert address here].
Additional dues may seem burdensome, but the price of no AAUP would be much higher. Being a member of the AAUP isn’t just the prudent thing to do; it’s the right thing to do.
Sincerely,
