WE ARE DKG!! Let’s Share it!

At DKG, we provide a service and want the world to know about it!

A recent Collegial Exchange article centered around questions “What is Marketing?” and “What is Publicity?” So, let’s talk about it! Marketing is about how you reach your customers to “sell” your goods or services. Publicity, on the other hand, is about gaining public awareness for a product or service through media, albeit social media, television, radio, or print.

Here at DKG, what are our “goods and services?” We know we are leading women educators who are actively engaged in promoting personal and professional growth. Our members are individuals who are concerned about educational issues worldwide and we often partner on projects that support education in developing countries. We also have a voice in educational policies that impact students and their families.

We are not just an organization of teachers and principals. We are educators in a plethora of settings-- for example, a school nurse or librarian, college professor, a scientist, a researcher for an education-focused law firm, an early childhood educator at a local daycare. Most recently, we began to induct collegiate women to increase opportunities for mentoring. These are all the ways we can promote our goods and services to recruit top-level educators to join our organization.

We provide scholarships and stipends for members to continue their education or realize projects that make a difference in their communities, which is wonderful, but are we really reaching our core “consumers”? Are we “marketing” our organization to bring awareness to who we really are, what we really do, and what our mission is?

How Should We Honor Our Deceased Members?

Focus #1: 

Honoring a Deceased Member…
The International Membership Committee is often asked about the need for chapters and state organizations to strictly adhere to the published procedural practices when planning the Celebration of Life/ Remembrance/Necrology Ceremony for a deceased member.

Our response is that chapters and state organizations are free to honor their deceased members by any processes and procedures they choose. Chapters and state organizations are not bound or restricted to any International Ceremony of Life/Remembrance/Necrology Service, including those suggested on the website or other publications.

The content of the ceremony is entirely at the chapter and state discretion. Many chapters and state organization do choose the traditional published ceremonies to provide continuity of practice. It is their choice.

Individualized ceremonies remind us of the personal aspects of our deceased member’s contributions to DKG. The International Membership Committee encourages unique and personal tributes appropriate to the memory of members; whether that be through printed biographies, testimonies, photographic displays, PowerPoints, necrology readings, music, artistic displays, deciding on the use of roses/ academic regalia or candles, or a combination of these or other enclosures when developing a personalized ceremony.

The important factor is to honor the member and to remember her service to DKG.