Originally Posted by
MajorTomski
To allow the hobby to continue safely and with as much fun as possible.
I'm not in favor of huge expensive productions to drag people who have no interest out to the field, just to see them leave and the club's funds depleted because of the advertising. But, we do need to be open to everyone who does take the time to come to the flying field and try to let them see that it is a fun hobby.
Absolutely!
Like any organization, it takes CONSTANT campaigning by the membership to keep the total membership numbers up.
In the past this was easier to do as fathers, relatives and friends would drag out newcomers to flying fields and get them hooked to the hobby.
The constant 24/7 workdays have taken their toll combined with the influence of the Internet, so there is very little of that going on.
This is not to say that things are dire, nor that there is NO interest... rather that "we" as proponents of the hobby are NOT DOING A GOOD ENOUGH JOB.
To that end a few of us in our club decided to do something about it, so we formalized and advertized our free training program...
The result: In years when average membership has declined by 20-30% in area clubs, our has gone up by 40%, with over 65 new members this year alone. We have to turn people AWAY from our training program as it is always full.
The cumulative result over the last two years of doing this, is our membership is higher than at any point in our past 60 year past.
The interest is definitely there, as are the monies to support the hobby. The problem is that not enough people are doing what we did.... It only takes a few,
As with any organization, less than 5% of the membership actually contribute, and at least half of the rest only complain about what the 5% does or complains about the general state of affairs. Hmmm....
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