Founded in May of 1998, LeTip of Freehold, NJ holds the bold title of the Largest Chapter in LeTip. Meeting at the American Hotel in Freehold, NJ every Thursday morning, their room gets full of their 114 members. LeTip has had a handful of chapters reach 100+ members and Freehold has held its reign for 4 years. Due to their size, each meeting features four showboaters and 2 speakers.
Seth Rappaport, chapter President, described a couple of the ways they keep things fun and exciting while maintaining the LeTip meeting structure. They have a meeting coordinator who overseas creating different ways to break out groups so they can get to know each other. Every 5-6 weeks they break out and do roundtables with the advertising brochures from all of their members companies. Another thing the chapter does when going around the room to do their 30-second commercials is to add something like “Say your favorite type of sandwich”, “favorite sports team” or “favorite movie”. Seth says, “you’d be surprised how many relationships form through little things like this!”.
On a bad day, Freehold will have 80 people at a meeting, which means it gets difficult to interact with every member in the time span of a normal meeting. One of the activities the chapter likes to do to build relationships is to have some of the members gather for breakfast after their regular meetings in small Power Partner groups of 10-20. They also have outdoor events like the Wiffleball tournament they held just last month. The ladies in the chapter like to refer to themselves as “WOLF”, Women of LeTip Freehold. These ladies like to get together and have ladies night. Because so many of their categories are taken, Freehold often host mini-mixers and all members must bring a guest for the categories that are not taken. Those member who cannot bring someone owe the chapter a $5 donation.
Freehold’s success has been guided by strong board members. Katie Dinomo, Tip Master, says the chapter passed a record 8,016 inside tips and 2,317 outside tips between January and November 2018. Freehold’s Top Tipper is Barbara Schechter, a baker who owns Barbara’s Cookie Gifts and Favors. She has passed 307 tips in the past 11 months. Following Barbara, Cami Gunther, who owns Gunther Publications, an advertising firm, has passed 236 tips. With 114 members meeting every Thursday morning, LeTip of Freehold always has business going around.
