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American Mensa Region 10
RVC Column
by Mel Dahl, RVC 10
March 2026
I recently had a conversation with a member who told me that he thinks we put too much emphasis on local group events and not enough emphasis on how many great opportunities for networking we offer. We have special interest groups that cover a wide range of activities and interests. These include religious and political SIGS (for all different viewpoints), travel, lifestyle, reading, French conversation. We even have a SIG for underachievers.
It's easy to post a message on Mensa Connect that says, "Hey, I'm interested in starting a group to go to lunch and talk about the history of early modern France; any takers?" Or "Hey, I'm going hiking in the Everglades this weekend; anyone care to join me?" Or "My local science club is having a really interesting talk on (insert interesting subject here); anyone want to join me? We can go out for coffee afterward."
I disagree with the member that we are overemphasizing local group activities; I think we need to continue to push them full steam ahead. He is absolutely right, however, that one way in which Mensa is badly underutilized by its members is the opportunity to find other interesting people. Finding new friends who share your interests is like finding a job: They do not come looking for you; you need to go looking for them. The Bible says that if a man would have friends he must show himself to be friendly.
Mensa is full of great people well worth spending time with. Don't waste your membership; go find some and have a great time.
February 2026
It's a bit of an old chestnut but it makes an important point. A newlywed couple sat down for their first Sunday dinner together. The husband noticed that the wife had cut two inches off the pot roast, wrapped it, and put it in the refrigerator for future use before putting the remainder of the roast in the pot and into the oven. He asked her why she did that. She said "Because that's the way my mother always did it."
A few weeks later he saw his mother in law at a family event and asked her why she did it that way, and she said, "Because that's the way MY mother always did it."
At Thanksgiving dinner, he asked grandmother why she always cut two inches off the roast, and grandmother responded, "Because my pot is too small for the whole thing."
One of our greatest legal minds, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once wrote that "it is revolting to have no better
reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV." Yet how many of the things that we do, are done only because that's the way we've always done them, even if the reason for doing them that way has long since vanished.
As we move further in 2026, I would challenge everyone to take a good long look at how we do things. If there's a good reason, keep doing it that way. If not, well, maybe it's time to do something else.
And, if you want to know if you're in a rut, ask someone who hasn't been around for very long. People who've been in ruts for a while tend to no longer see that they're in a rut; frequently it's the new people who see more clearly that it's a rut.
January 2026
On December 5, 2025, the AMC had a full day planning meeting at our national office in Hurst, Texas. I have both positive and negative things to say about it. First the good:
The facilitator reminded us of a number of very important concepts that I think boards tend sometimes to forget. Such as being stewards rather than leaders (stewardship means leaving the group better off than you found it; leadership means winning and is zero-sum). Governance means enabling the members and the local leaders. We need to anticipate what is coming at us before it arrives and plan accordingly. We need to focus on giving our members good value for their dues money, which means leaving them better off for being Mensa members than they would be if they weren't Mensa members. All true.
The bad news is that this is precisely what was said at the last planning meeting I attended in 2012. In 13 years, our strategic plan has not appreciably changed. In 13 years we are still talking about the same stuff we were talking about then. The very same points and the very same conversation were made on December 5 that were made then. Had I dozed off at the 2012 meeting, slept for 13 years, and reawakened on December 5, I would have had no clue, other than there being different faces in the room, that it wasn't still the same meeting. It's not that I disagree with anything that was said -- that's all good -- but rather that I would have expected some actual progress over time.
Here's what we did not talk about: Everyone knows that the greatest challenge facing Mensa at the moment is the loss of members. Since this was an, ahem, *PLANNING MEETING,* and since that is our greatest challenge, I was hoping to hear some very specific steps being taken to reverse that trend. I had some fairly pointed questions I would like to have asked: What steps are we taking to identify the most fertile ground for membership recruitment? What have we been doing to this point to recruit new members and, of that, what has worked and what has not worked? How do we know what has worked and what has not worked? During the time period in which our membership numbers were dramatically increasing, what were we doing then that we are not doing now? Do we know why in those specific time periods our numbers went up dramatically? There are others, but those will do for a start.
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