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bobby1
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« on: April 13, 2016, 09:50:13 am » |
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Your show looks like it will be awesome but it is a bit of a distance from Central California. We had our show about a month ago an like yours we emphasize getting young people in the door. They really make a big difference in the atmosphere of the show.
I'm the California Federation of Mineralogical Societies Membership Chairman so I'm always going to our shows and promoting the show activities relating to membership. One thing that bothers me is the lack of focus on utilizing the largest pool of potential new members as a resource of getting new members. Clubs work very hard to get the attendance at their show up as much as possible but they drop the ball when it comes to fully investing their efforts in recruiting new members from that pool of attendees. We have a fully manned membership table located in the path of the normal flow of spectators, not at the admittance area because there is too much going on there that causes distractions from the membership table. My wife mans the table most of both show days. She has a large sign on the wall behind her that has a led lighted border, a disco ball on her table and an abalone dish with candy. As the kids are dragging their parents around they spot the disco ball and the candy dish so they drag their parents over to the table. She asks them to please don't touch the disco ball and also asks the kids a geology related question such as what is the state rock (serpentine for California and there is one sitting on the table) and gives them a piece of candy for the answer or for the effort to answer. All of this gives her an opportunity to engage in conversation with the parents and from that question she starts her sales pitch to see if they are interested in joining the club. All of this focus on membership and recruiting new members really is effective in extracting potential new members to the club from the show attendance. We have a rather large attendance so she gets to interact with a lot of people. This year resulted in 30 new member applications being filled out at the show. Most of the time each application results in two new members, husband and wife. I'm encouraging any club to adapt this procedure because it really works in increasing the membership rolls.
Bob Rush
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