Commander's Message | July 2017

Fernando Rivero
Commander
Hollywood Post 43

Welcome to the 2017-2018 Legion Year!  Hope you had a fun and relaxing Fourth of July with friends and family, celebrating our nation's birth!

I want to extend a warm welcome to our newest members. We hope you find Post 43 to be your home away from home and your surrogate family. To our renewing members, we love you and thank you for your continued membership and service.

My priorities as your commander are: Continuing Membership Growth, Increasing Community Service and Engagement, and Securing a Vibrant Future.

Thanks to a revamped website and web-based membership management system, we were able to increase our membership by more than 30% this year.  Online signups and dues collection made joining and renewing easier than ever. Now you can refer a new member by just pointing them to hollywoodpost43.org/join. We led the 24th District in paid-up membership, transfers, and new members. Let’s continue this momentum and get to our goal of 1,000 members!

Our members are leading and involved in more community service projects today than in recent memory. We need to continue to foster and facilitate members who wish to contribute to service in important American Legion programs like Boys State & Girls State, High School Oratorical Contest, and JROTC support. Our members are taking point on initiatives to help the homeless in our community, and we are rededicating ourselves to making sure our local veterans can access fully-funded and accredited American Legion Service Officers who will help connect them with the benefits they have earned. Our Legislative Committee is back on its feet and engaging our lawmakers on behalf of our veterans. If you’re not involved and want to be, come to a meeting and find out how to join a committee and contribute! 

We are working hard on modernizing our operation and improving our business practices to make sure we are running a tight ship that reflects the scope and scale of our organization. Running a multimillion-dollar nonprofit corporation like Post 43 is different from a traditional Legion post. Change is hard and slow, but we must be properly structured and organized and ready to meet our obligations to our members today and for years to come.

This is shaping up to be a landmark year for our post. We have received final permit approvals from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety for construction on our new theater project, and work is beginning. More designs and renovations are on the way to refresh and restore our beautiful and historic clubhouse in time for our centennial celebration in 2019. Soon, I believe Post 43 will be well known throughout L.A. and the country as a premier flagship post of the American Legion, and one of the most important veterans’ organizations in Southern California.  And we must never forget our patriotic obligation to remember those we have lost and to mark in remembrance the events that have shaped our country’s history in war.

I hope you’ll join me as we start an amazing new chapter in our history.

For God and Country,
Fernando