P3D club attendance

["Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gary Schacker wrote:
  
>I'm pleased to report that the San Diego Stereo Camera Club continues to
>regularly achieve attendance figures approximately twice what they were
>as little as two years ago.  We now average about 25 persons at regular
>monthly meetings.
    
That's great Gary!  Perhaps you can give us a few tips on how you
achieved this increased figure?  Club attendance should be the number one
concern for anyone involved with a club.

In our last issue of Stereogram (2.10) our President (that's me!) wrote 
on "The Year in Review":

----
Membership/Attendance/Promotion 

We started in September with 33 memberships and 26 subscriptions
and we are ending in June with 51 memberships and 72 subscriptions....
Despite our high membership numbers we are averaging 25 people at 
every meeting for the past six months, a rather low attendance.  We 
need to work to increase attendance and membership by either promoting 
our stereo club or stereo photography, or both.  Here are a few ideas: 

… Advertise in local papers 
… Present public shows 
… Conduct public workshops  
… Pass fliers in camera shows 
… Create a web page (in the Internet) 
… Show our stereo pictures to friends 
… Find a new public location for our meetings 
-----

(Some people might say that 25 people in 51 members is a good attendance.
But 51 is not the number of members but the number of memberships.  If
we count family memberships as 2 -and quite a few people come as couples-
then we have over 70 members.)

There are two ways to increase attendance:  Make the programs interesting
so more existing members come to the meetings.  Or, increase membership
assuming that some of the new members will come to the meetings.

A couple of people have come from the Internet (Mark and Karen from
Pittsburgh come in mind) or from the fliers we have passed around.
Members bringing friends works too.  

When a person expresses interest or a visitor comes to the meeting he
or she should be treated as a very special guest.  Make every effort
to make them feel welcome.  Ask them if they enjoyed the meeting, write 
to invite them to the next meeting.  This kind of attention will make
them feel good about the meetings and increase the likehood of them
to attend the next one.  There is a lot of work involved in adding
just one attending member.  But it pays off in the long run.

We have not tried advertising in the paper.  Any other ideas for 
attracting new members or increasing attandance will be appreciated!

George Themelis - Ohio Stereo Photographic Society


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