Revisiting declining membership

snoop wrote:
Looking through all the posts from earlier this year, regarding the
sliding membership in our US soaring activities, along with all the
other trailing bad news, i.e. SSA building in need of big repairs,
there is no soaring operation in Hobbs, I'm curious about thoughts of
"what if the SSA became a division of the EAA, similar to the
Vintage,
Classic, Warbird divisions of the EAA.

Two big airshow/conventions a year, EAA publishes all magazines, and
a
lot of members at those fly-ins and airshows to ask the question
"where
can I start". Plus lobbying power, and unlimited networking.
Just curious for thoughts.

About declining membership:
SSA Board and Hobbs staff have been working hard on reversing the
declining membership in SSA. This has been approached to a great extent
by working toward retention of members, including personal letters to
many lapsed members asking why they have left.
Dinner conversation with my director brought up that SSA has had some
success this year in this effort.
Membership as of 12/31/04 was 12,617 compared to 12,305.
It is a good sign when you can reverse a bad trend.
There are no simple answers, but hard work does pay off as shown above.
Let's go get some more folks involved and try to keep the ones we have.
UH