ANST - Symptoms (was Membership Numbers)

[Keith Hood]

The most important question about shrinking numbers of paid memberships is, 
why is it happening?  We must answer that question before we can make a 
reasonable decision what to do about it.

The paid membership count is not a cause; it is a symptom of the real 
problem(s).  It may be a good idea to ask each branch to provide the kingdom 
seneschal with a kind of a state-of-the-group note concerning its paid 
membership, a sort of informal report on group size and morale (unless 
that's already done under some other name and I'm just not aware of it).  
And whatever is reported, we have to realize that real-life concerns such as 
job concerns may be beyond our power to affect.

(What the heck happened to Stargate?)


As someone else has asked, do the numbers represent a drop in the number of 
people actually showing up at meetings and events, or do they represent only 
the percentage of people buying memberships?  What we really need in 
addition to the membership card numbers, is to start keeping a real head 
count that reflects actual breathing bodies, not just go through membership 
card records.  Such a count could be done fairly quickly; an officer of each 
barony/canton/whatever, who is familiar with the actual people, could go 
through it's phone list and make a fairly accurate count of the people, and 
report that.  To make it even more accurate, the count could be divided into 
groups according to degree of regularity in participation.  With such a 
count in hand, we could then see if we are really shrinking, or shrinking 
only in willingness to buy memberships.


      Tomonaga


--
A long bow and a strong bow,
And let the sky grow dark.
The nock to the cord, the shaft to the ear,
And a foreign king for a mark!

        -- Stolen from "The Song of the Bosonian Archers" --
               By Robert E. Howard, who should be
                 the patron saint of Ansteorra

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.