ES - Membership trend

[Christine Fink]

Sorry Ceatta...You forgot one:

Sent in the money too late and:
   a) they won't accept and declined your credit card
   b) sent in a check and they are waiting for it to clear before
      issuing your new card

Both of these happened to me and it took nearly 3 months to get my card. I 
found this very frustrating and almost gave up on my membership because of 
this.

Maria


----Original Message Follows----
Okay, the sociologist in me is crying out to speak, so here goes:

Declining membership can be explained by a variety of reasons:

moving away from Elfsea
burnout (believe me, I know, been there done that)
changing interests
disagreement with the way things are being done
lack of money (which may be temporary or not)
disagreement with someone in the group

The argument that membership dues don't benefit anyone except the BOD has
been around for ages and has yet to be proved, but still exists as an "urban
legend" among the SCA.

What would benefit us more is to look at the membership, see who has dropped
off, and then ask why.  Where do they fit in the above listing?  Can we
contact those that are still local and ask them what happened?  If we find
that out, perhaps we have a chance of "fixing" the perceived problems before
they become obvious (if they are problems at all) and detrimental to us all.


But to bemoan the drop in membership without knowing why is like bemoaning
the lack of rain -- we can't do a thing about it.

Okay, the sociologist in me is going back to sleep.

Ceatta o'Gulcleth
(at one time, in another life, a sociology professor)
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