Re: Re: AIS: membership trends

Len made a good point about numbers. Maybe that should not be the issue. I feel compelled to point out that put in perspective of American Society, people have not been joining societies and organizations and this may be irrelevant to what the organization itself is doing, but more how society itself is functioning today. The book Bowling Alone was written to address this trend. Whether a drop from 12,000 to 6,000 is not just typical of what is happening to all organizations would have to be carefully evaluated. Maybe that is actually better than average. Although this type of statistic is saddening maybe we should be celebrating that it is not worse. One factoid I have never understood is the percentage of people who join but do not renew. From information in bulletins etc. I have calculated that 20% of our membership never renews and this I believe has been true since 1950. 


len suchy <len2760@juno.com> wrote:I do not think that in any period of time we have changed as much as we
have since 1970.
Since 1970 everything has changed in our world and the way we live more
than ever in history. 
New homes are more expensive but with way smaller yards. Smaller yards
leave less space for many plants as people had in the past.
People work with more pressure to perform better than their coworkers to
achieve a better performance rating. Every day pressures have had an
effect on living, on society and on clubs.
If your younger and have children, etc. time is not always available.
Making decisions about areas to cut from the budget has to be a factor. 
Every expense seems to jump more than most of us can contemplate. Irises
now sell for over $50.00 with this last year I bought one for $85., and
one for $100. Going to the national AIS cost me over $1000. last year
and will probably exceed that this year. AIS (nationals) is not the only
group that is so expensive. I had to stay home from the daylily and the
rose and the daffodil nationals this past year.
The world is changing and so are the people involved. Peoples wants and
interests continue to change and will.
Clubs; iris, rose, daylily, daffodil, all face a challenge and have a
constant need to keep interests there for the people that we can get
motivated enough to give us their time and energy.
Numbers alone should not be the indicator of how great a organization
is. THIS is a big, big mistake made by many.
I feel that I receive and get more from some of the smaller clubs that I
belong to. 
Semi-dead attending members do little except add to the total number of
attendance.
Now you all have permission to "shoot" me. Len

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