On January 13, 2018, twenty-two Board members, Committee Chairs, and Past Presidents met to establish goals for 2018. In a departure from previous goal planning sessions it was decided to focus on three key areas for 2018, with the intent of concentrating attention and energy to realize success. These three areas were: (1) Partnership Development, (2) Outreach: purpose and alignment with our mission, and (3) Establish the Fall Class at Mountain View College to serve the needs of South Dallas. One Board member was assigned to be responsible for each goal. The following summarizes accomplishments related to those goals.

Goals Planning Efforts for 2018

Partnerships
The goal was to assess and define our existing partnerships and to determine the criteria we should use in selecting new partners.  During the year, the Board decided that there was no need to move forward with a more formal partnership structure, and no need to further discuss the issue. We have also decided that we no longer need a Partnership Committee.

Outreach
The intent of this goal was to assess the objectives of our outreach program, taking into consideration our resource limitations. In August, the Board decided to add more resources to our outreach efforts by adding an additional Director to the Board.

We now have two distinct outreach teams. The first is Community Education, which is focused on providing support for the general public. The second is Youth Development, whose focus is on more educational opportunities for schools, home school organizations and our members. Both teams are actively seeking members and determining their action plans.

New Fall Class
The Board approved a request by Rose Mercer to establish a second class in southern Dallas county at Mountain View College in the Fall of 2018. This venture turned out to be very successful, attracting 52 new class members, and exceeding the 25 new member goal. The make-up of the class was much more diverse than previous NTMN classes. Because the students in this class live all over Dallas County (in fact, 62% of them live north of I-30), we do not really know what caused the population of applicants to be different than previous classes. A team will be investigating how we can replicate the effort that attracted this diverse population to NTMN at this time. It seems apparent that there is more demand for our class than our traditional schedule can accommodate. There also seems to be specific interest in the timing of a class in the fall, in addition to or as a replacement for the spring class. It should be noted that other chapters have fall rather than spring classes. Several chapters conduct two classes each year.

Due to the immense effort of implementing two classes a year, the Board has decided not to have a Fall Class in 2019. We will continue to study the effort required to hold two classes annually, including assessing the demand, and the wide range of impacts on our Chapter.