Ever wonder how things get done in AMCAW? We have teams of dedicated volunteers that keep things running. A feature this month is an AMCAW Team highlight. AMCAW has sixteen different volunteer teams that keep AMCAW alive, creating new and exciting tutorials, virtual guild meetings, newsletters and all things metal clay. Let’s look into one of our teams, the Member Engagement team.
Members are the center of our universe! This team focuses on some of our most important questions: How can AMCAW meet the needs of metal clay artists like you? What are the benefits you want from AMCAW which would make your membership an absolute must-have year after year, and compel you to tell your friends, ‘you’ve gotta be part of this!’
Being passionate about metal clay, our team members have a great sense of fun, are very active on social media and love interacting and sharing metal clay related stuff, this team will be excited to meet you!
The AMCAW Member Engagement team’s main focus is keeping AMCAW members happy! The team also wants to help grow the number of members and raise more interest in AMCAW. Team members build and maintain strong relationships with AMCAW members, ensuring they remain actively involved, feel valued, and contribute to the organization. The team’s primary programs are gathering and publishing tutorial collections; developing and maintaining the Metal Clay Fun with AMCAW Facebook public group; and administering the AMCAW Members and Friends annual survey.
In addition to its mission of cultivating AMCAW members, the team collaborates well within AMCAW, primarily with the education, marketing, web teams.
Member Engagement team members are driven by a passion for learning and enthusiasm for sharing the expertise of talented and generous artists with fellow clay and craft enthusiasts. AMCAW relies on the Member Engagement team members’ managerial, editing, proofreading, analytical, and graphic and web design skills. The team helps clarify AMCAW members’ expectations; captures the knowledge that exists within the metal clay community; uses administrative abilities to gather commitment agreements from tutorial creators; edits text and graphics; and finally, publishes content.
One of the rewards of volunteering with Member Engagement is that team members are the first to see the interesting and challenging tutorials that AMCAW publishes. The most recent tutorial collections are Fantasy, launched in December 2024 and Flora and Fauna, launched in January 2025.
The Member Engagement team was founded and led for more than five years by Julia Rai, one of the most efficient and proactive team leaders AMCAW has had. After Julia decided to step back, Anca Crahmaliuc took on the role of team lead.
Let’s get to know the current team members:
As the lead, Anca keeps the team running – organizing monthly meetings, sharing organizational expectations, and creating board reports. She ensures the team’s workflows are running smoothly by selecting tutorial authors, signing author agreements, and following the stages of the tutorials until they are published and public information is released. Anca administers content for and publishes posts in the Metal Clay Fun (MCF) Facebook group. She also oversees the workflow of the Technique Library and helps supervise member survey tasks.
As the team’s representative in the Executive Team (EBR), Susan helps supervise the team’s tasks. She is also deeply involved in graphic editing, as well as producing and publishing AMCAW tutorials
The team’s newest member, Jaime has taken on the primary task of developing this year’s member survey. She also helps with AMCAW tutorials and is transitioning in as assistant to the lead. Her hope is to lighten the load for some of the veteran volunteers on our team.
Joy’s main focus on the team is the tutorials. She does an initial check and read-through when the tutorial is received and is one of the proofreaders when the webpage and PDF have been created. Joy’s goal is to ensure, as much as possible, that the tutorials are error-free when they are published.
As moderator for the Metal Clay Fun (MCF) Facebook group, Annemarie gets to choose posts from our library three times a week and make sure everyone is having fun. In addition, Annemarie reviews the existing tutorials and identifies techniques for the technique library. She then passes them onto others who sprinkle their magic over them so they can be published on the AMCAW website as a member benefit.
Sara’s main function in the group is to assist with and proofread the tutorials, and take other steps to ensure we release exceptional quality materials to our members.
If you are interested in becoming an AMCAW Volunteer, we’d love to speak with you. Please visit our volunteer page.
