After you apply
What happens next.
Applying is the short part. Here is how the council decides, when you will hear, and the one thing worth doing while you wait.
What happens now.
Straight away
Your application reaches the membership committee.
It arrives complete — your answers, your practice areas and your narrative — so nobody has to come back to you for the basics.
Before the next dinner
The board votes.
The board meets half an hour before each dinner meeting, and membership applications are on that agenda. Applications that arrive close to a meeting are usually held to the following one, so the committee has time to read them properly.
The same week
You hear from the council.
Either way, somebody writes to you. If you are approved, that message carries your login for the member portal, where you set up the directory listing other members will find you by.
Come to the next dinner.
You do not have to wait at home to find out. The board votes in the half hour before each dinner meeting, so an applicant in the room that evening usually hears the outcome the same night — and is introduced to the council as a new member on the spot.
It is also the best hour you can spend on the application itself. The members voting on your name are the people at those tables, and an applicant they have met is not an applicant on paper.
Next meeting
October 7, 2026
Jimmy’s Lakeside Grill, Windsor, California
Worth doing in the meantime.
None of this is required, and none of it affects the vote. It is simply what a new member spends their first week on, and it is easier to do now.
Find a headshot.
A professional photograph, not a cropped group shot. It is the first thing another member sees in the directory. The council runs a session for members who need one.
Draft a short biography.
A paragraph on how you actually practice — the work you take, the clients you serve. Members search the directory for a discipline, and a specific paragraph is what gets you the call.
Meet a member.
If you named no endorser, the council will connect you with one. If you did, tell them you have applied — they are usually asked about you.
Anything at all — the application, the dinner, paying by check — write to membership@reepc.org. A person reads it.