Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Jacob Sailors - Membership Drive Magician


We take it for granted today that acquiring and keeping Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) members is vital to the continued well being of our organization. Just last week I worked on a graphic for the IFB Board that shows the annual membership breakdown for each district. Today we pay close attention to the ups and downs of membership, but in the early days you couldn’t even be a member of Illinois Farm Bureau. Individual membership in IFB wasn’t started until 1919 ­– a full three years after the organization was founded. Before that only the county organizations were the actual “members” of IFB.  Probably no other membership drive has been more strategic and vital to our existence than that first one in 1919. Vice-President Jacob Sailors was appointed to the task of recruiting members. Of the 59 counties who were part of Illinois Farm Bureau in those early days Mr. Sailors oversaw the membership drives in 32 counties. He hired individuals for $10 a day plus expenses to solicit membership. By the end of the 1919 he had some pretty impressive numbers. In the 32 counties he was directly responsible for membership went from zero to 40,551. In the remaining 27 counties where Jacob was not directly involved total membership was only 6,549.  Vice-President Sailors worked his membership drive magic in just over half of the counties but was directly responsible for 86% of the new members. In today’s dollars Jacob Sailors infused the young organization with $3.45 million. A great start to address the taxation, legislation, and transportation issues of the day. Thank you Jacob Sailor for believing in our organization and starting us out on a solid financial foundation. With your help we were poised to accomplish great things well into the next century.


Intro page from a 1930s Illinois Farm Bureau
Membership Drive book.