For those of you who don't know I volunteer at Southport SLSC. I do water safety for the nippers most weekend and regular patrols. I know, overweight ex props shouldn't wear dickies but wtf helping people in the surf makes me feel good. Anyway that's more your problem than mine.
We're losing members at a decent rate. And I'm pretty certain it's just not our club. 2 years ago we had enough members for 16 patrol groups and 1 intro patrol group for new Bronzies. That's about 160 to 200 active members. Last year we had 13 patrol groups and this year we are down to 11. that's a drop of about 50 members!
What does that means to the public? Probably nothing. But it makes a big difference to us. There are about 160 patrols in a regular season. splitting that between 11 groups instead of 16 means a patrol every 2 to 3 week instead of every 3 to 4.
Keeping in mind that I'm a regular member and not in the hierarchy of the club. How do we turn this around? How do we encourage people to spend 6 hours on the beach once a month? How do we talk them into the one night a week and a Saturday morning for the 8 weeks it takes to qualify?
Any ideas?
We're losing members at a decent rate. And I'm pretty certain it's just not our club. 2 years ago we had enough members for 16 patrol groups and 1 intro patrol group for new Bronzies. That's about 160 to 200 active members. Last year we had 13 patrol groups and this year we are down to 11. that's a drop of about 50 members!
What does that means to the public? Probably nothing. But it makes a big difference to us. There are about 160 patrols in a regular season. splitting that between 11 groups instead of 16 means a patrol every 2 to 3 week instead of every 3 to 4.
Keeping in mind that I'm a regular member and not in the hierarchy of the club. How do we turn this around? How do we encourage people to spend 6 hours on the beach once a month? How do we talk them into the one night a week and a Saturday morning for the 8 weeks it takes to qualify?
Any ideas?