Mulder wins national recruiter award
by Jonathan Eisenthal
Connie Mulder has lived and breathed agriculture her whole life. She and husband, Gerald, now of blessed memory, raised cattle, corn, and soybeans over a fifty-year career. She was honored Monday, March 16, with the NCGA Walter Goeppinger Recruiter Hall of Fame Award, in recognition of her lifetime total of 765 recruits since 2010.
Recruiting was another thing she and Gerald did together.
She fondly recalled, “There was a time when we would get in the car or the pickup in the evening and drive around the country and visit neighbors and socialize and then visit with them about membership.”
They also worked as a tag team at Renville County Fair every August.
“He would go out and circulate on the fairgrounds and remind people to go back to the booth and see Connie. When they came to me, I would check on the status of their membership, and I either could sign them up or renew them, so that worked really well that way.”
Numerous family turned out to help celebrate the award, which was announced at the annual meeting of the Renville County Corn and Soybean Growers Association. Andrea (daughter) and husband David Daugherty of Renville; Corrie Guggisberg (daughter) of Northfield; David Mulder (son) of Bloomington; Tyler Daugherty (grandson) and wife Heather of Renville; and Nick Daugherty (grandson) and wife Alannah of Sacred Heart all cheered Connie on as she accepted the award.
Connie laughed about how feeding people always seemed like a key to success in recruiting. At the county fair, she worked with Doug Toreen, who would recruit for the Soybean Growers, while she worked in her role for Minnesota Corn. She had coupons for a free malted milkshake and Toreen had coupons for a pork sandwich.
“If you signed up for both, you got a full meal,” Mulder chuckled.
Her day job off the farm provided yet another forum for recruitment, though Mulder says she was never the hard sell sort. For 37 years, she worked at K&M Manufacturing (now a part of Great Northern Tool), which sold after-market parts for tractors.
“When the farmers came in to buy stuff, I could catch up and talk to them about their membership, too,” Mulder said.
Gerald served on the Minnesota Corn Growers Association (MCGA) Board of Directors for nine years and he and Connie often talked about the importance of membership.
“A big part of what MCGA leaders do is to sit down with elected officials to share our story. Jerry would say, You know, a single voice, they don’t listen to too well, but when we go to the State Capitol and walk into the legislator’s rooms, or we go to Washington, D.C., and we walk into the senator’s rooms, and they look at us and they say, ‘Oh, this is Renville County.’ Right away you can see them thinking, click, click, click. They’re thinking numbers. And they know that not only is Renville County big in MCGA membership, but also the state of Minnesota is one of the top three states for Corn Grower membership. Those numbers matter. They pay attention to a group with strong membership.”
She recalls that right around the year 2000, MCGA decided that farm women and young adult children had a right to their own individual memberships, so that everyone could be included appropriately. Another long-term recruitment strategy has emerged in recent years.
“We are now concentrating on our FFA groups, too,” Mulder said. “We talk to the advisors, and we encourage the kids to take a youth membership form. Our county group will pay their $20 membership if they join as a student, so it’s no cost to them.”
Mulder notes that young people who join as students, especially if they join agricultural companies, or remain in farming, are already accustomed to membership and understand its benefit to all farmers. “I’m mentoring now,” Mulder said, reflecting on the need to not only recruit members, but also leaders.
“My grandson, Nick Daugherty, is on our county board, and I would really like him to see him take an active position on the state level, and I think in time he will. Right now, he has three young children, and there are a lot of demands on his time.”
Mulder believes she’ll continue her recruiting activities even though she’s no longer growing corn.
“It’s always fun to be at the Corn and Soybean booth at the county fair, to meet new people and talk to them,” Mulder said. “Wherever I go people know they can talk to me about membership. Just the other day, I was at a local concert in Redwood Falls and then when I went to a restaurant afterwards, I had two or three people walk up to me. We visited and they said, ‘Okay, we’ll see you Monday night at the annual meeting and you can sign us up then.’”
