Originally Posted by
rcmiket
I'm with you there were only 150,000 ( or close to) paying members in 2015 while the AMA claims over 180.000 members we gave away over 50,000 ( number from Model Aviation a few issues back) free youth memberships. I posted this back a few months ago from the EC meeting minutes. Nothing wrong with the youth memberships but come on lets be realistic about membership numbers and growth.
http://www.modelaircraft.org/aboutam...ecminutes.aspx
Mike
Originally Posted by
Sport_Pilot
Free or not, they are members. IMO we probably should find ways to give more free or discounted memberships.
But you see Sport , Mike's position is spot on . Believe me I have nothing against youth free memberships either , I used to be a kid myself , raised a couple over the years , and I have a generally quite positive outlook that most of em will turn out to be fine adults . But the fact remains that free memberships do nothing tword "keeping the lights on" as it were , and when an organization with less than 200K members counts a full quarter of those as being paper memberships only , and those free memberships representing the biggest growth sector , Yea , I'd say there's a problem .