MoT #5: Membership Strength

2. Why Does Membership Strength Matter?

Increasing your membership strength is almost invariably why you're even reading this, so hopefully not much convincing needs to be done about why it's important to your club. Just as a quick reminder however, here's some of the reasons why our club decided back in 2009 not to be small anymore:

• Tired of doubling or tripling up on roles
• Bored of people having to do the same roles over and over
• The same people had to be officers over and over
• Sick of burnout
• Same speakers doing the same topics didn't provide variety

All of these went away as we gained members (both new and returning) and trained them.

One of the dangerous effects of declining membership is that the energy to prop up the club and keep it going diminishes with each person who leaves, which can lead to a quick downward spiral if you're not careful. The converse is also true - with more members, you get more energy and more momentum. However, even low membership clubs can effectively use what energy they have to recover, if they're willing to put in the time, energy, and imagination to pull it off, as my club proved back then.