I belong to a couple of clubs here in Colorado Springs, neither of which has a giant turnout when meeting time rolls around. This wasn't always the case, as I can recall several nights of standing room only. I'm not sure what has happened over the years, but what I want to know is, what do you guys and gals out there do to recruit new member into your clubs?
I'd hate to think that its just going to be me and one other individual one night sitting around talking about plastic, but recently that damn near happened. Halfyank can attest to that. A whopping 4 people showed for one of the meetings. One of those being me. The four of us had a good time, but it just wasn't what I was expecting. Any ideas as to what we (my clubs) can do to attract more modelers? Thanks. "Q"

Put up some flyers at Extremes and a few other places on Carson.

What kind of stuff do you guys actually do at this meeting apart from discuss your own plastics. Perhaps re-vamping the schedule to have something more interesting...like having group builds for a massive dio and entering it into a competition or even better...selling it! The dividents would certainly yield more motivation.

Hmmm...
Great suggestion. They could schedule their meets inside the 10th SF shoot house while we conduct live fire exercises. It'd be safer in there than driving on I-25, give you some realistic sounds and smells to go with the modelling experience, and then we'd have someone to help us police up brass afterwards.
Can't guarantee anyone would want to come back for a second meeting though.

Best place to recruit is at hobby shops. See some guy with a kit that you are intimate with, discuss it, point out how great it is, or better still ways to improve it and then tell him about the group (of hopefully) experienced guys that meet jadda, jadda, jadda and can help him. I did that at the Squadron shop open house recently. Got a guy to join Armorama. We in the Dallas area push more on that than a club. too many of us are scattered and have such wild work schedules that we found meeting was almost impossible.

I love the shoot house idea, although I doubt anybody else would be up for it. :-)
At the meetings in the past we would knock out the business part a.s.a.p ie... vote on whether to sponsor and award package for an upcoming contest etc. Usually lasted no more than a couple minutes at best.
Next we followed up with the intro's if there was somebody new in the crowd or if someone had been away for an extended period of time. During the intros, if you had brought a kit, or a build with you, then you gave a quick intro about that..."This is my tank and its green........" . You get the idea. Usually had a demo or two scheduled, a raffle for kits etc.
At some point we would take a break and get some fresh air...(smoke break for others) Generally it was a great time. Now... if and when somebody shows up, they have a kit with them and they build on it, and then go home. No problem with the building.........but the meetings have gotten so boring. I'm the secretary for one and am at my wits end about what to do. I ask for input and get nothing. No pics for the newsletter, no ideas for upcoming demo's. I have one really good friend who just packed it in due to all of this. Says he can stay at home and do just as much as whats going on the meetings, and the sad part is I have to agree with him, as I am about ready to join him.

I have a plan of setting up a table or three at the LHS for about 4 hours or so on a Saturday and just building. I'll have some club flyers on hand, some built models, ref material, unbuilt kits etc. Hopefully I can generate some further interest in my club. I would hate to see it go down the tubes because of lack of interest, but that is wher it is heading at this point.
I really appreciate your guys input here. Hopefully I can helpturn this thing around. Thanks. "Q"

Free beer?

It probably would work, however, we meet at a police station so there would be some risk involved. "Q"

Hello Matthew

My old club had the same experience as yours, we started an annual show/competition to publicise our club and show what we got up to. Members have joined steadily since, also does your club attend other club shows in the area, we have a few crates of models that go in the back of a car to put on display at a show with a pile of leaflets about our club.

Do you run any themed competitions, every month or two months? This can be a good way of getting people to build stuff and bring it along.
We ran a points system, so that every model entered got one point, Bronze got 2, silver 3 and gold 4.
At the end of the year the person with the most points won a voucher to spend at a local model shop.
This way people who are prolific but may just be starting in the hobby have as much chance as the more advanced and less prolific modellers.

Hope things work out mate.

Dus

Put an add in the paper proclaiming dancers and free beer. Or you could the better way and post flyers up at local hobbie shops. Just ask if they could put it up for you, and they probably will. THats what we do at my shop.

~Chip

My IPMS club appears to have the same problem... too little new/young blood... I put it to the rising costs of modeling in SA...

To recruit and "spread the gospel" though, they (the club) have a display table or 2 at most hobby and craft shows in the greater Cape Town metropol. I also try to put the next meeting dates on the Armorama events calendar - and I encourage other SA model club's to do the same.

On the flip side I use the monthly IPMS meetings to try to encourage members to join Armorama... at the moment it's too early to tell if this has had any meaningful results, but I persevere none the less...

Rudi

First of all Congrats on looking out side of the square for more members but the fact is it is not only you club in the USA but it is happing all around the world I am on the commitee of a club here in my home town Of Perth Western Australia and we have had a steady drop in the membership and I have done some research in to this and found that the Web is one major problem also Plastic modeling is a very private hobby that is what I have found The one thing that does stand out is that there are not many younger People taking up the hobby due too they like the PC and the oppersite sex which is a shame and I was scared that our hobby might die out but the one thing I have learnt is that the older we get the more we all look to learn about our past and that is one place I am looking to here in Aust for more members to my club. I have tried for some time to get a modelling program into our schools here in Aust but with no success Yet . But that does not mean I am going to stop as the way I see it is I get just one Kid out of 500 then that is one more for the model makes to keep making the models we all like to see. I wish you some luck with this and I would like to hear more about it
Cheers

Pretty much the same things are going on here in the Detroit MI suburbs. Our club has less attendance in the past but you have a steady core of middle aged men. We occaisionally get some teen age guys to come in but none of them really become permanent members. We keep some info available at local hobby shops but I think all of our recruitment for permanent members is word of mouth.

Long term I don't know where the hobby is going. I see people that get their kids interested in the hobby but it typically ends in high school. However, I assume some of these kids that enjoyed the hobby may return as adults at some point . . .

(Yay !! First post.)

Thanks to all for your replys. At least I'm not the only one out there experiencing this. I spoke with a good friend of mine last night for close to an hour about this. He used to be the president of one of the clubs so I value his input. I won't go into what he said, but it boils down to the fact that the one club let some sub-standard leadership get in and it went down hill from there. Looking back at it, he's right, and I'm not sure how to go about fixing it. I was in Iraq at the time so I had no say-so in the voting process.
We hold a quarterly contest, but the turn out is spotty at best. I know for a fact that it isn't advertised outside the club and I will fix that. The other club that I am a member of is a breakway club that came from the original. They went their seperate ways due to "stagnation and a failure to grow" is what I am told. They have said they "Will not go back" and guess what?...they are experiencing the same effects as the original club. NOBODY SHOWS UP! My new job is going to take me away from the club scene, but I plan to do what I can to help things. Flyers, build demos at local shops, better advertising etc. Hopefully it will work out.
On a side note, Paul Boyer spoke at our Region 10 Convention this past week end. He pretty much summed it up like this..Todays kids have a lot more going on than we (40 +) year olds did when we were kids. As a consequence there aren't a lot of junior modelers. Its a cycle. Usually from 6-10 years they are into the model scene. Then comes adolescence and girls at which point the models get shelved in favor of video games etc. Cars and girls come with high school, then college, beer, and more girls (I'm seeing a trend here :-) ) They don't seem to return to the hobby until sometime in their late 20's to early maybe mid 30's. I guess I am just going to have to work this as best as I can and hope for the best. I will also attempt to get others to get into the Big "A" as this place is a gold mine for modelers old and new. Thanks again for all of your comments, tips and or suggestions. "Q"

Just as a comment, many of us older people(well over fifty) just enjoy getting together with our friends and enjoying each others company. We have many similar life experiemces, families are grown, etc. So we rib each other on how much we did not get done, how we really should get some more help for our failing eyesite and how easy it would be if we didnot have jobs, wives, kids etc. We go to contests for something to do and are sort of getting tired of the hassle of putting on shows. 9-11 also reminded us that this is just a hobby after all and much of the former intensity we had conerning models is now gone.
capnjock