[AGA-sc] was gregwatson now membership

[Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@wilstream.com>]

Switching lists because I'm about to start yelling and I don't want to 
yell at my friends in front of people that I don't know.

Before I respond point-by-point, I want to update the board on 
membership numbers so that you can see where I am coming from.

We currently have 683 members.

When I generated the mailing list in November 2005, we had 727 members. 
113 people who expired with that issue have so far declined to renew. We 
have had 41 new members since November 2005. I don't think these numbers 
are particularly unusual.

However, membership has been slowly declining since November 2004, when 
we had 850 members. I attribute this to a lack of an AGA convention in 
2005. So having a convention (or not) affects our membership in a big way.

We could argue whether membership was artificially inflated by the fact 
that folks are *required* to join if they want to attend the talks, but 
I don't believe that the majority of people who register for the 
convention are joining only because they must.

Now.


S. Hieber wrote:
>  
> I believe that, in general, membership is helped by AGA having links and references and, importantly, recommendations, in *lots of diff places* -- on lots of diff web sites. But I think we already have that without buying space. No one link brings marked membership, but many links in many places helps lend credibility and probably helps swing some folks over the fence into membership.
>  

You're right. I'll buy that. But we have a little money to burn 
<sarcasm> and while I'm certainly not advocating that we spend willy 
nilly, we *could* afford to spend a little dough on advertising and 
*see* whether it works.

Or print The Basics even though it's expensive.

Or sponsor an experiment.

Or pay the Treasurer a salary. Or the Promotions guy.

Or hire a lawyer.

Or buy insurance.

Or software.

whatever.

> If we could point to marked increases from specific types of exposure, or 
> special reasons why one exposure might be especially beneficial, then I'd say 
> that it's worth the gamble to to buy or swap space for more of that kind of 
> exposure and see what happens. However, I don't see anything like that on the 
> horizon.

I understand the logic. And Scott, this is directed at the entire Board 
and not just you. But Pardon Me, how will we ever find out if we don't 
TRY? Or hire a professional? Or do something besides whine about 
membership and how much work we're all doing?

It's *embarrassing* to me to have so much money in the bank and not be 
doing anything with it. I believe that we are letting the organization 
and the members down. Even if we try something and fail, the board is 
not doing its job if we sit on a wad of the *member's* cash like a 
grouchy old hen on a nest.

If the rest of you don't agree, fine. I'll sit down and shut up after this.

>  
> Not being as creative, I'll raise again an old idea:  Big TAG. Since TAG is our biggest reason for folks to join, a Big TAG still might be our best chance to increase membership. If we did increase membership with Big TAG, we probably wouldn't have a net increase in revenues; we might even have a net loss for a period of time but I think, given a year or so we could reach more folks *and* remain solvent, and that fits within our mission. Maybe we could hook it's premiere into the promo for 2006 convention somehow.

Scott, you are right. This is still a good idea. But with membership 
numbers down, and falling, I don't feel comfortable with committing to a 
big TAG in perpetuity. You mentioned before that perhaps a single, 
special issue Big Tag could be a compromise. I think that would be a 
good way to give back to the members some of their hard-earned money.

Cheryl
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