2026 President’s Message

As we enter 2026, we pause for a moment to reflect on the past year. Our club has much to celebrate. It appears we will end 2025 with around 120 new members. About half of those came as a result of referrals by current members. Clearly members value our club and desire that their partners and friends have the same opportunity. So, we welcome our new members and thank our older members for inviting others into the partnership. We also want to thank 2025 President John Gresham for his superb leadership this past year. His accomplishments are too numerous to list but none are more important than the steps he implemented to assure our stable financial future and his exceptional efforts at assuring a progression of strong leadership in coming years. Truly he is a hard act to follow.
 

For 2026, our intent is to focus on the basics of membership, leadership, and fellowship

MEMBERSHIP
Obviously, everything we do hinges on membership. Our long-term organizational health requires a steady stream of new members. And that does not happen without the efforts of current members spreading our message of partnership to their friends and former co-workers. This coming year we will be exploring a number of new initiatives designed to add value to club membership. Stay tuned for those as the year progresses. We will also work to make our communications timelier and more beneficial with a new monthly newsletter format. We will work to create both a reason to join and a reason to stay.

LEADERSHIP
No organization survives without leadership, and our club is dependent on members being willing to step up and serve in those roles. We are streamlining and simplifying our processes to lessen the time requirements of many roles. We are creating groups that will tackle some duties that were previously done by single individuals in order to spread the workload into bite size
pieces. We will work to create a reason for you to consider serving.

FELLOWSHIP
We are a social organization. Our reason for existence is to foster connection between former JCPenney associates. That connection comes in many different forms from multi-day regional gatherings to small local group lunches, to a couple of partners getting together for golf or coffee. It includes our wonderful Partners Magazine and other communications. To aid those connections, we have the ability to connect you with other members in your local area. This year we hope to also expand those avenues of connection to a stronger social media presence and digital participation.
 

We will work to be more inclusive in our connection efforts. All of our members come from a long tradition of partnership. Together we continue that tradition. Please let us know how we can be of help.
 

John Chapman- National President