Jack wrote:
On 4/23/04 10:58 AM, in article
, "Craig Freeman"
wrote:


In the result's from the SSA club poll fourty seven percent of
responding club's said they did not want large numbers of new
members.


Not true for us. We have grown by more than 25 members since last season: in
part due to the retirement of the local commercial operation, but especially
because the club moved boldly ahead to make the decisions, the investment,
and to do the training, coordination, and outreach necessary to position
ourselves for this spurt of growth.

A club that wants to grow, can grow.
True - there are some change management issues, and it takes effort, but the
rewards are there.

We have grown our paying club membership by 30% and the active membership has
probably doubled in the last year. Two years ago it was not uncommon to only
take one glider down to the runway, because we only had enough people there to
fly one. The club was technically insolvent, and continued existence in
question. Sunday we had four airborne and could have flown more.

Main points for us we
Stop acting impoverished and sort things out so that the club WORKS.
We improved the airfield maintenance, and general equipment like the folding
chairs at the launch point, and got a new windsock (it is no better than the old
one, but it makes a lot better impression)
Get a decent website going - have all the documents and information there.
At least 40% of our new members saw us first on the web, or looked at web sites
and decided we were the better choice. Not because of our equipment , which is
antiquated, but because we communicated better.
Get people involved, welcome them when they appear. Gliding involves a lot of
people on the ground, use the time to talk to visitors.
Discourage disagreeable, rude or disruptive behavior. If the person guilty of
antisocial behavior is unwilling or unable to change - motivate him/her to find
another club. We had to lose a couple of curmudgeons to gain a crop of great
colleagues.
Get youngsters involved, people like being able to bring their kids. Sometimes
their parents join too...
Motivate them to join.
Follow up visitors/prospects - Did you enjoy your flight?
We are flying again on XXX.
Tell them what it costs - explicitly. Most people have an erroneous idea of how
expensive flying is.

To a large degree it comes down to Operate, Communicate and Activate.


See the following link to the DG website which provides insight and
discussion (in English) about the challenges facing soaring growth
worldwide.

http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/zukunft...Piloten-Zahlen



Jack


This is recreation.
Lots of other expensive, time consuming pastimes are thriving.
Ours happens to need a little more application etc. But the primary impediment
to growth is the attitudes of people in many clubs.
A room full of grumpy old men is hardly an enticing offering. A case in point is
this newsgroup - we tend to discuss a lot more negative stuff than positive.