[Ansteorra] Participation vs. Recruitment

[Sir Lyonel]

I agree, cozyn. The corporation has really hogtied us with the changes to what a subscribing membership gets you. We should have tanked the corporation years ago.

About the only remaining argument in favor of memberships is the "support your local group" tack, but even I no longer accept that.

Tant pis.

En Lyonel

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2012, at 1:27 PM, HerrDetlef <herrdetlef at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not so much analysis as raw data. Draw whatever conclusions you can.
> 
> Participation is indeed based on memberships. The problem is that only
> officers and weekend SCA'ers (who go to calendar events outside of their
> local groups) benefit from subscribing memberships. Exactly how do we
> encourage weekday SCA'ers who are not officers (who go almost exclusively
> only to events within their local groups) to subscribe? We can't exactly
> tack a non-member surcharge to weekday events, because the vast majority of
> them do not involve a site fee.
> 
> When I first subscribed as a member of the SCA, the sustaining membership
> included a subscription to *Tournaments Illuminated*. That quarterly was
> worth the price of membership itself. Without that subscription, a
> sustaining membership is little more than a qualification to hold office
> and a way to dodge a non-member surcharge. The information presented in a
> kingdom newsletter like *Black Star* benefits weekend SCA'ers and officers
> far more than it does weekday SCA'ers. There is not much incentive for a
> weekday SCA'er to become a subscribing member.
> 
> The price of a sustaining membership in the SCA--including the recent
> increases--is still far lower than the price of membership in most
> professional and academic organizations, but I doubt that many younger
> newcomers to the SCA can appreciate that fact. If we are able to encourage
> weekday SCA'ers to become subscribing members, local groups would be able
> to maintain their required membership numbers, and the generated revenue
> would allow increases in the price of membership to be lower than they have
> been in the recent past.
> 
> Again--how do we do that? Do we make subscribing memberships more
> beneficial to weekday SCA'ers, or do we find some means other than
> membership numbers alone to measure participation?
> 
> I'm only asking questions. I really don't have any answers. I wish I did.
> 
> Detlef
> 
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Sir Lyonel <sirlyonel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Salut cozyns,
>> 
>