December 2022

SCRWC Annual Report – 2022 The Sussex County Republican Women’s Club has had a very busy and successful year. We have a total of 94 Regular and 37 Associate members. In April, we hosted our “Don’t Be Lonesome Tonight” dance and fundraiser which had been delayed due to the pandemic.  It was very successful with 150 in attendance.  Bob Lougheed and the Memphis Mafia had most of us dancing the night away.  Thankfully no one broke anything.  Senator Wilson held 2 live auctions.  One for a 2-hour cocktail cruise for four on a sailboat and the other for one week at a 2-bedroom beach condo.  Thanks to our fundraiser extraordinaire, George Chambers, we had these and many other outstanding silent auction and raffle prizes to include 10-$100 gift cards for So Del restaurants and many other items. We have had lots of exposure with press releases.  Denise Perez has filed a write up of every event we’ve had all year.  This has given us coverage in the local papers as well as publicity. We continue doing our new member orientations in conjunction with the Seaford Republican Women’s Club.  We include a structure of the Republican Party when we do those as many new members who are new to DE as well as many who have been here do not understand what the party structure looks like.  Our next orientation is January 21st. Our website team led by Carolyn Grob has done an outstanding job keeping our site up to date with the latest information.  We also launched a section dedicated to Legislative activities.  Kathy Enedy has done an wonderful job highlighting bills of import.  They are featured on the site with a synopsis of the content and a recommendation.  In addition to the excellent information about pending legislation, Senator Richardson has contributed information on how to testify before legislative committees and how to write letters or emails to legislators and editors.  All of this and more can be found at http://www.scrwc.net/.  As we track the traffic to our site, we find that there has been a steady increase in unique as well as repeat users.  We have invited any club with a website and interest in legislation to link our page to their websites. Our Legislative Committee Chair, Michele Forzley is launching a Legislative Internship and is seeking to engage adults and students who have an interest in learning about the legislative process to work with her.  They will review legislation pending in Dover and assist with distilling them into clear, understandable language for consumption by the general public.  These will feed into our website’s Legislative Updates page. We hosted each of our local as well as statewide candidates at our meetings this year to make sure our members were informed about their platforms.  A number of our members volunteered to assist with their campaigns hopefully making another DFRW Diamond Award a slam dunk. The SCRWC celebrated its 70th Anniversary with an outstanding party.  Jane Thompson and her committee orchestrated a phenomenal evening. The party was a throwback to our founding year of 1952.  The menu was typically ‘50’s as was the music.  We were joined by many of our local Representatives and Senators and were honored to receive proclamations from the Delaware House and Senate.  We also made contributions to each statewide, local and row office candidate.  I’m very proud to report that our contributions totaled $14,100.  We continued with our MELP project by providing Spanish to English Dictionaries to the students at Phillip Showell Elementary School in Selbyville.  This year we added 2 books on Civics to each classroom.  We have recently decided that we will begin a new initiative.  Next month we will have a representative from the Sussex Pregnancy Center join us.  We will be discussing ways in which we can support them with needed items for their moms and babies. I am very proud to tell you about an honor recently bestowed upon one our members.  Ruth Briggs King, the only Republican woman in the Delaware General Assembly, was featured in Elysian Magazine.  Ruth is listed as “One of the Women Who Inspire Us” by The National Foundation for Women Legislators. Plans for next year include another April Fundraiser which we hope will be as successful as our 2022 event.  We will also be convening a “working group” to review our mission and the programs that support it.  We will be determining numeric goals for member recruitment, diamond award hours, website traffic and fundraising.  We will report these metrics to the membership each month listing the actual vs projected.  As, Carly Fiorini says, “The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.”  We will evaluate missed as well as achieved goals so we will know where we are related to where we want to be.  Essentially, we are moving to a “business model” which I don’t think has been done before.  We want to be the Elon Musk of the NFRW!   Marilyn Booker, Chair Sussex County Republican Committee ​