SSA Growth

On Friday, July 13, 2012 12:12:14 PM UTC-4, Frank Whiteley wrote:

Intro members, 79, (good on Pittsburgh Soaring Club for a sizable chunk, now make those you've attracted full members)

So far, Pittsburgh converted 6 out of 21 temporary members to permanent memberships this year, with one or two candidates expected to join later.

In my other club (not in the SSA), we always had many intro memberships, but a very low conversion rate. At that time, I changed the advertising from "experience of a lifetime" to "learn to fly!". I believe it was this changed advertising that attracted a different crop of people, and that was very good for the club. I believe the SSA is doing something similar with FAST, and it has been a boon to our club.

We benefited from some publicity in the past year: exhibiting three gliders at an "open house" day at a nearby airport (it was fun and no big deal to organize - we did them a favor!), having a title-page feature article with video in the Sunday edition of the regional newspaper, a presentation at the local Rotary club, and even a sale ad for one of our gliders on Barmstormers, which gained us an enthusiastic new power pilot member transitioning to gliders.

What are other clubs doing? I'm always looking for inspiration.