There are some in leadership positions in the organization who say that that AMA is 30,000 members "shy" of where they were at their peak. Forget for the time being that they know (or should know) an exact number as compared to any particular year. Also forget for the time being that if they don't know this number, it might be reasonable to question just how well they know the business they're purporting to manage.

However, in business it's common to measure people numbers based on Full Time Equivalents (FTE), which is hours worked per year divided by 2080 (note 1). So you add up the number of hours logged, for example doing maintenance on equipment, office hours, etc. divide by 2080 - and you get number of people considered to be working full time. It's not perfect, but it's commonly used as a figure of merit for analysis. Say we apply the same concept to AMA and number of dues paying members to validate what leadership is telling us? If you take the amount of membership revenue in a particular year, as reporting on their IRS990 filing, and divide by the cost of an adult membership, you can come up with a similar figure of merit, what I call FAMs, "Full Adult Members". You don' even have to inflation adjust dollars, because they are same year.

If we use that method, in 2002 the AMA reported $6,639,768 in membership dues to the IRS. That same year, as validated by the renewal price quite in a Model Aviation Magazine from that year, was $48. So that equates to 138,329 Full Adult Members (FAMs). Since I have data for every year from AMA 990s, I can say that is also the peak year for FAMs calculated using this method. Using the exact same calculation method in 2021, the last year for which 990 date is available from public sources, the AMA reported $7,359,755 in membership dues. The amount for a full adult membership that same year was $75. Same simple math says that's 94,048 FAMs.

Just comparing 2002 to 2021, the AMA isn't "30,000 members shy", but over 41,000. Does anyone actually believe 2022 any better? I don't. And I'm confident the numbers calculated the same way will ultimately prove it.

So one has to wonder, why is the number of members "shy" being so vastly under-reported? Are they deliberately under-reporting or do they truly not know how to do this sort of analysis? Do the other EC members or the ED even bother to do some simple math - or are they oblivious? Regardless of which is the reason, one has to wonder about their suitability to run an organization of this size.


Note 1: https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowl...me-equivalent/

i am going to give em the benefit of doubt, and say, that

somewhere in the system is an actual metric of how many members are actually paid and current and alive each year. add in the life member numbers and it should be a current total for that year.

this number should be known to someone in the operational sector of the AMA, each year.

now, none of the above means that any of us, will ever see or know that actual number.

I do believe they know, but to be off by as far as it appears, I'm not sure why the number is being under-reported.

When you run out of real issues, promote stupid ones.

Yeah, I wonder what new bus they'll throw us under in search of new members. They gambled on remote ID being cost and size prohibitive and lost when the industry said, "hold my beer."

The reality is that fewer and fewer people want the "product" - their version of the hobby - that AMA is selling; meanwhile, FT seems to be doing much better selling the hobby as they see it. Yet the EC continues to talk down about FT ...