Lately our club membership has dropped off a bit, leaving only 18 members.
We’re looking for some new ideas to attract new members.
What are some of the things clubs have done to attract model railroaders out of their basements and into the club? Our membership is currently $25 a month which takes care of the rent.
Thanks
Jim
Jim.
I am afraid our club has fallen into the same situation as yours. Even with our dues at $50 a year we have lost members for various reasons beyond the control of the club. Family issues and the passing of members is one thing. Economic times are another reason. There are two members that have had to drop because they have to work several jobs to make ends meet when a few years ago they were making good money with one job.
Finding new members and retaining the ones we have has become a serious problem. Open houses and shows has proved little results.
Pete
We’ve had a very similar experience at our club, even though we have N and HO indoor layouts and an outdoor G scale layout.
We hold open houses three times a year, in May, August, and November. We advertise in local newspapers, on radio stations, and distribute flyers, as well as having roadside signs directing people to our open houses, and the turnout has been dropping off for a couple of years.
Many of the visitors are repeats who say they stop by to see what has changed since their last visit, and a few ask for membership details and even take applications with them, but never return. Our membership dues are $10 a month, so we don’t consider ourselves overly expensive.
The nearest real railroad, the Union Pacific Sunset Route, is 30 miles away, so a lot of the locals never have much chance to ever see a train. The nearest hobby shop is 70 miles away in Tucson.
Another factor may be the “electronic age” we live in. Young people today are more interested in computer games, tweeting, facebook, and other, more “instant gratification” pursuits instead of having a hobby that requires concentration for more than two seconds.
In my neck of the woods,model railroading is not near the top of list of favorite hobbies. We have a model railroad club in the Charleston SC area. A few years ago the club had to move to another location. They ended up at one of our two malls. After they moved to the mall, I visited numerous times. Talking to some of the members they stated membership increased because of the “visibility” being at the mall instead of a basic building on some back street of town. I have not been back in about 6 months because i have been working 6 days a week and haven’t had time. But being more visible might be the key.
I would try and work on keeping the members you already have. I recently left my club because all we do is sit around and listen to the old dudes relive their childhood. Clubs need to be active, I suggested starting a modular group, suggested a few outings like visiting Toronto’s Union Station but all people want to do is sit around. [:(]
What about reduced fees for the younger ones, for students?
Wolfgang
Thanks
It’s a shame to see that it might be a trend.
Increasing visibility might help some, Just have to figure the best way.
Decreasing dues to Kids won’t help our particular situation. We only charge for adults and they bring their kid for free. The few that have kids may only have a membership so that the kids can come.
JIm
Our club is in the same situation. we are down to 18 paid members. we just put on our yearly train show and had a signup sheet to see if we had anyone who might join. We had about 10 people sign up but who knows how serious they were. If we get a couple out of the group it will be good. The problem is with the state of the economy it is harder to have time and money for hobbies. Everything goes in cycles so it might be a lean time now but it should be better in a few years.
While it is not a club, my LHS has a huge HO layout that we can run 4 times a month. While it is not train related, he added a R/C race track and some of the R/C guys got into trains. So adding some other actives may get some new members.
With a lot of us being older, maybe contact some assisted living developments. There will be some people there MRR age. [:-^]
Might all so contact local schools and scout troops.
Cuda Ken
Although I don’t belong to a club, I thought I might post some personal observations and or experiences I have had. I will visit any model railroad club having an open house, and spend a great deal of time looking at club displays at train shows. I’m always impressed by the layouts, but the vast majority of the time, club members appear too busy running trains or talking among themselves to interact with visitors. If you ask a question, it might be answered, but that’s all. Not once do I recall anyone ever asking me what my interests were, where I lived, or was I interested in becoming a member. I’m always polite and complimentary, but I must be doing something wrong. Or are they? There is one exception, a small club some miles from me are always friendly, open to questions and seem to enjoy visitors. I haven’t joined because of the distance from my home, but they always get a generous check in the donation box.
Tom
I have only visited one club in my area and it was to far away for me to consider being a member but I enjoyed the visit. It was not negaive.
Most of my experiences with clubs have been interacting with modular clubs at train shows which I visit usually at least twice a year. I have found those experiences to be quite the opposite of Tom, the folks there have been friendly and talkative and made me feel welcome. They answered my questions.
I used to live in a suburb of Syracuse NY and soon after I moved there got involved with a modular club there through a LHS. In fact I designed and helped build the original four corner modules at my house and one of them was going to be mine to complete and scenic. This was my first effort in scenicing and I was enjoying it, but it was not up to their “magazine” standards to they took possession of it and gave it to someone else. As it turned out, this club was an “elite” kind which wanted to get in the magazines so novices like me weren’t tolerated.&nb
There is a club in a small town up here that approached the management of a shopping maul. The maul had a few empty stores in it and the club asked if they could use one until a tenant was found. After they moved in business to the maul increased as the kids wanted to go to that shopping maul so they could see the layout. As a result the club was aloud to stay in that vacant store for a dollar a year, provided someone was there to operate the layout on the weekends for shoppers. During the week it would run only when and if there was a club member available to operate things. When I was talking to a couple of the guy’s they said their membership increased three fold as a result of the exposure.
Brent[C):-)]
Tom, thanks for that bit of insight and your comments. Our club has a series of open house dates coming up for the Holidays. I will keep your comments in mind and try to make it a point to respond better to the visitors that I interact with.
We periodically have that problem. We seem to attract most of the new people around our open house season, November, December, and January. However, we did just receive a visit and application from a gentleman who moved up from Florida and found us on the internet. He lives off 202 south of rt 1, so he is actually closer to your neck of the woods. I think he knows about your club, so I’ll have to ask him what makes him want to drive further.
The problem with the open house “interested parties” is that they think that what they see going on during their visit is what happens all year long…i.e. trains running (hopefully) all the time. They don’t realize that there is a lot of work that needs to get done, some of which involves crawling around on the concrete floor under the bench work. My personal opinion is that we should not be giving out applications during open house, but ask that prospective members visit us a couple times on normal meeting nights to see what actually happens.
The other thing to ask yourself is why did the members leave. Was it normal attrition, or were there some internal issues that need to be addressed? For example, some nefarious individual actually insisted that the other members do something constructive rather than stand around and gab? Personality conflicts? The one bad apple noxious individual that poisons the air such that other people quit to avoid conflict? (I’m not saying that you have any of this. Seemed like an okay group the time I visit
Internal strife is always a concern when a group is working on a project. Our club layout was built in the early seventies and has become unreliable and a fire hazard. There was a vote to convert it to DCC. We stripped out 200 pounds of wire,six variarcs and seven control panels. There was lots of hidden track and a nine turn helix that was not needed. There was not a vote to remove the helix with all hidden track. Since there were 4 club officers at the work session when the helix came down some members that are not active felt left out. Little did they understand that if we waited until the next vote it would have passed by majority vote anyway and just delayed the inevitable removal by a few weeks. The removal of the hidden track has opened up some valuable real estate for an industrial switching area giving the rail road more of a purpose of being. Constructive business meetings and active participation is crucial to club well being. Having too many inactive members has become a concern for us.
When we have open houses and shows with our modular group we informally designate a quasi public relation person to talk and answer questions. Some of our members are not as personable as others. Having a couple floating members that are people persons help on the public relation front.
It seems that the last couple years we lose a couple members but gain another. Two steps back one step forward type thing. What has been good for the club is the active participation of the young members. Keeping the new generation interested has become a priority second to new membership.
Pete
An Open House would be a good idea. Put an ad in the local newspaper and local TV. A lot of time local networks and papers will do this for free. Advertise at the local hobby shop. Not only about the Open House but also about looking for new members. When people show up, TALK TO THEM. I have been to several Open House events and no one said one word to me.[:(!] There were something like 2 club members per visitor and NOTHING. Needless to say, I did not come back to look into membership.[2c]
We were a DC club and there were a lot of meetings where changing to DCC was discussed. And of course there was objection to that change. But we were able to surmount that issue by converting one branch line to DCC and, by demonstration, able to convert the majority of the membership.
I hate to say this, but something like the major track removal you speak of would not have been done at our place without discussion and the input from the membership, no matter how many officers were on board. Unfortunately we have learned that there is always a group of people with grandiose ideas who want the club to go in this or that direction, and are very capable when it comes to demolition. On the other hand, they don’t actually have a clue or the talent to rebuild.
To your point, a large group of inactive members is a problem. Especially when it comes to maintenance. But why is it that the inactive membe
I have found that if you want to keep and retain new members, you need to “control” the current members of your club that may have bad attitudes and overbearing/obnoxious personalities. The club I use to belong to had a problem like that. One over-tolerated bad egg caused enough chaos that several quality new members quit after the first couple weeks of attending the weekly club meetings. Sometimes I think these members are just afraid that with some new blood, they will no longer the power to steamroll the opinions of everyone else.
I am a member of a club that has about 40 members with about 20 being very active including myself. We have a website that you can arrange to visit and on Saturdays you can walk in. When we have a visitor someone will walk them through and use a club throttle and train and have them actually run the train. We have signed up a couple new members this way.
Once a year there is a train show in town and we have a information booth. That weekend we have a 2 day open house. This year (August) we probably had more than 100 people come through to visit. We also advertise (flyers) in the LHS.
We also have 2 ongoing projects that keep members interested. Our club is in pretty good shape but like everyone else it is much easier to loose a member than gain one.
I recently discovered a S scale club located within walking distance of my home, they are in the process of converting an existing layout from Hi-rail to scale and are seeking new members who are not of the American Flyer mindset, attrition of older members is major factor in their decision to go scale, which has the greater potential of attracting new members to the wonderful world of S scale.
I’ve attended two open houses to date, and the members were cordial and interested in my S scale endevors, however, my last club experience made me a confirmed “lone wolf” Despite this, I somehow got volunteered into laying rail for the new yardl! Crafty bunch!
Now that fine scale S traction group, also in my area is leagues above my skill set, i’m always willing improve, but I don’t have the patience as they debate how many rivets are correct for a PCC air brake cylinder band!
Dave