When I was involved in a club near me I suggested printing a “Welcome To…” handout for visitors. It was a simple brochure with a “mission statement” a background of the club and the requirements for membership.
This helped to break the ice when a visitor showed interest and it also helped with members who were not so PR savvy that they could at least hand out a flyer and not have to worry about actually speaking, which some people seem to have difficulty with. We passed them out to interested parties during our annual train flea-market as well.
It also cured the problem of misinformation — which some members were famous for spewing — the dues, age requirements, meeting times, contact information and such were clearly stated.
The club finally disbanded, for many of the reasons mentioned in some of the previous posts, back in 2005. It was fun while it lasted!
This has been VERY interesting topic to me. I have a train club in my area, 36 miles one way, and has been around at least 20 years I know of located in a mall. I know they are open to visitors on Saturdays and Sundays and I think 2 other days during the week. I been there numerous times and have only be talked to by members about 4 times and the conversations were short lived. Being a loner of sort and an overtime work schedule, I don’t see myself joining a club. When I retire in the next couple of years, I might rethink the idea.
I sure wish I would find all the paperwork I had from the old club. I used to use a simple program, Microsoft Publisher, for some of that stuff. I did a monthly newsletter, too.
I remember the brochure was a three panel, folded format that was easy to pocket and one of the panels could be filled out to request further information, etc. Today, of course, it would have a web and email address, too.
I really miss doing that stuff for the club. I would make crossword puzzles and railroad trivia quiz questions for the newsletter, too.
Right on! I like the 3 fold idea. I have created a draft copy of what our brochure might contain. One of the members of the Executive Committee has already expressed his support for the idea.
The newsletter concept is interesting too. Henk and I have gone to great lengths to improve the communication process within the club, but what we have achieved is actually a bit bureaurocratic. We are publishing all of the minutes of each of the various committee’s meetings, but it is as boring as … can’t say the word! Summarizing the details in a newsletter sounds to me to be a much better approach. Back to the Executive Committee!
That Welcome brochure idea is a great one. We need something like that in our NMRA division. Need to ask the superintendent about that…whoops, that me.[:$]
And it’s still a great idea, even though we don’t have a lot of situations other than the yearly train show to pass them out.
It is interesting how this thread is bifurcating into two distinct areas. There are those responses from people who’ve had negative experiences with clubs, but no real solution to fixing that or even suggesting that such failures are to be expected. Then there are those with positive experiences who are willing to be flexible, latch on to good ideas, and to do the work it takes to make such great stuff keep happening.
I’m not pointing this out to suggest there’s an easy answer, as if getting the first group to act more like the second will solve such issues. That’s just not the case, because the issues involve other people and they vary so much. I think the feelings of rejection and unwelcome are reasonable under the circumstances described, BTDT myself. If people don’t throw out a Welcome mat it often is hard to engage with them.
But having worked and volunteered in the non-profit sector for a long time, I can’t emphasize enough how hard it is to get someone to just walk through the door and show even a minimal interest in whatever it is you do. They represent a valuable commodity, with new views and expectations. Sometimes, that alone can be threatening, witness the lengthy list of requirements just to qualify to be considered for membership detailed above in at least one example. It’s obvious that some clubs haven’t thought through what they need to do if it’s anything beyond what those presently engaged desire to happen.
Of course, there are modern concerns like will the new guy just show up to steal our stuff? Pretty unlikely if you have their verified contact info, but everyone has their own levels of comfort with such things. I’ve never h
That Welcome brochure idea is a great one. We need something like that in our NMRA division. Need to ask the superintendent about that…whoops, that me.
And it’s still a great idea, even though we don’t have a lot of situations other than the yearly train show to pass them out.
It is interesting how this thread is bifurcating into two distinct areas. There are those responses from people who’ve had negative experiences with clubs, but no real solution to fixing that or even suggesting that such failures are to be expected. Then there are those with positive experiences who are willing to be flexible, latch on to good ideas, and to do the work it takes to make such great stuff keep happening.
I’m not pointing this out to suggest there’s an easy answer, as if getting the first group to act more like the second will solve such issues. That’s just not the case, because the issues involve other people and they vary so much. I think the feelings of rejection and unwelcome are reasonable under the circumstances described, BTDT myself. If people don’t throw out a Welcome mat it often is hard to engage with them.
But having worked and volunteered in the non-profit sector for a long time, I can’t emphasize enough how hard it is to get someone to just walk through the door and show even a minimal interest in whatever it is you do. They represent a valuable commodity, with new views and expectations. Sometimes, that alone can be threatening, witness the lengthy list of requirements just to qualify to be considered for membership detailed above in at least one example. It’s obvious that some clubs haven’t thought through what they need to do if it’s anything beyond what those presently engaged desire to happen.
Of course, there are modern concerns like will the new guy just show up to steal our stuff? Pretty unlikely if you have their verified contact
These days DVR recording security/surveillance cameras are dirt cheap! Just the presence of the cameras may keep a casual pilferer on the straight-and-narrow.
It is kind of a side hobby of mine but I started setting up cameras around my layout, and eventually all around the property. Many of the early ones I bought used off Ebay but now you can get very nice cameras with IR vision for cheap money.
Some will even provide a web feed so you can monitor from anywhere, anytime.
Take a look into it. Maybe some restrictions will apply in public buildings but check with the local law. Almost any enforcement agency is pro-camera, but ask around anyway.
All my cameras are hard-wired. With all the blue-tooth; DCC throttles and Wi-Fi stuff I have buzzing around I didn’t think adding sixteen wireless cameras to the mix would help.
Well I am glad some good may come out of this discussion allthough the great communication ideas would have done nothing to stop the things that happened to the clubs I mentioned. Another thing of note back on the original subject is that I told a few of the clubs that closed that they would have to face this and that they should gradualy convert to modular and they all said “this will never happen to us”.
Moduels take a lot less space to store. In most cases each member can store at lest one module at their home. A club I was with had a trailer in which some moduels were stored. Several members could park it at their homes.
Shoping malls, Recreation centers, etc. are often happy to allow short term setups for a few days. The club I was with was fortunate to be allowed to use a building in a city park most weekends. We also set up at many county fairs and train shows and other events in the area.
Another solution I have seen (although not a club) was a layout in large travel trailer, that the owner took to shows. I have visited clubs that had smaller layouts than what was in the trailer.
However, nothing beats club owned building if they can afford it.
No, you mis understand, I told them to do modular as a perminant layout, not to be moved unless they had to be, gives you a lot more latatude and your wiring can be standard. This would have worked great for me but my new space was so much smaller than my old. I only have a 11x13 room comming my way vs the basicly 5 car garage I had, about 1/10th the space.
We have sort of taken that approach with our new permanent layout, but instead of using only 2’ x 4’ modules, we designed the layout so that it can be broken down into larger manageable sections.
We are renting space in a large old factory that has been repurposed into a variety of uses. We figure that at some point the real estate value will be more than the rental income. In fact that is probably the case already, so we are being realistic about the likelyhood of the building going under the wrecking ball at some point in the future. The question of course is where do we move to then?
They can’t win. I know the rules pretty well and yes they can not start anything before a full EIR, they can plan and this dose not affect terminating leases. Now they could have gone for historic and thrown a monkey wrench into the plans but the club has not been there 50 years (in California any building over 50 years can be declared historic by any resident) so I don’t think that will fly and it takes time to do that paperwork in the state. Now on another note, the huts I am sure are over 50 years, so if they bust butt, they may be able to do that with a simpathetic judge and delay tactics.