Originally Posted by
rcmiket
Thanks. "about" has never been a accepted accounting term that I know of.
Mike
If we were engaged in an accounting exercise I would agree. Is the response all that much different if it's about 175,000 or 175,236? The quest for specific numbers seems to be a recent one, and for me (just me), has a red herring sort of feel to it. I'm sure there is a ton of information out there that we don't know about, but the lack of ability to find it immediately doesn't really concern me that much. If I really want the information, I'll just ask for it.
Now the increase in membership from the last "reported" list that Mongo posted to what we see in the OP is interesting. After years of declining membership, they rebounded in 2010, then 2011. they went from 143k in 2011 to 154k in 2012, mostly due to free youth memberships. when there were increases in membership it looked to be 3-5 a year. From 2012-2015 we see about (sorry) 20k increase, which I guess is good news. Not sure if free youth memberships account for that. It could also mean people were feeling better about spending money to join, or the hobby was more accessible with arfs, foamies, electronics etc etc. I doubt the dues "promotion" brought in new members (solely for that reason), rather incentivized the ones already here. Willing to bet if they numbers really spiked high, we'll see the results of that in an AMA announcement.