I’m wondering what the best way to get people to join a new club?
We just started and we dont have a building or havent found a place to meet besides our houses right now. If you want to know where we are located please email me.
ICMR
Most newspapers offer free club meeting notices, so check into putting a notice in your local newspaper(s) about your club.
If you have local hobby shops in the area, ask if they will let you post a notice on their counter about the club.
Don’t forget to include places like Michaels/Hobby Lobby etc. Most craft stores have a community bulletin board they will let you put a flyer on. Also don’t forget varoius churches in the area, they generally have a community board as well.
If you can figure that one out, write a book and make some money off it.
Our club recently had the same problem. Even though we had an established layout, membership was just dwindling to nothing. Since you are an upstart you will have some different issues but these might help give you some ideas. To turn it around we did several things.
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Formalized new member procedures so no one who wanted to join would fall through the cracks or have unreasonible expectations. Everyone who joins now is certain to know what the club is all about and what they are getting into. All members get oriented to everything from taking out the garbage to the duties of the officers. That way we also don’t have members who join trying to change everything to what they think it should be. For example setting is Fall 1953 (scenery has to follow this) don’t join expecting to add an intermodal yard in the future. We are by charter way freight operation oriented. That has first priority when certain decisions must be made, don’t expect to join and double track everything to make it easy to operate through freights, it isn’t going to happen. etc…
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New members are assigned a mentor to work through all of above. This not only orients the new members but refreshes all this information to the old members.
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Recruit recruit recruit - You have to spend weekends out seeking people. We made a modular layout to show at the swap meets, train shows, GATS, and any other place that would have us. We hadn’t realized before but GATS pays you to show your layout. We had tried just having a table at the shows but that doesn’t attract enough attention. The moving trains gets people over and talking about yo
Cool, TZ…you won’t mind if I print out your post and take it to next Thursdays meeting, would you!!! We could do several of your suggested actions immediately. Perhaps even get some new members!!
A few more thoughts. The previous note was getting too long.
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Since you are just starting. Make a schedule of when you are going to discuss certain aspects of the club formation. Layout design 10/20/2005, free lance or prototype 10/27/2005, etc. You don’t need to resolve an issue (in fact you probably don’t want to) in one sitting. But post this schedule and maybe people interested in those things will be more incline to be interested and come to that meeting and others.
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After every meeting poll all the current members and asked what could have been done better. Make a pact that no one will be offended if everyone didn’t like a certain thing they tried. Everyone has good and bad ideas. Often a bad idea isn’t really that bad if tweeked a bit. Ask anyone who didn’t attend why and what would have made them want to attend this more than anything else.
Thank you for your help. This helps a lot and gives me some ideas for when we get bigger.
ICMR
One thing that I wanted to add… Since you don’t have a building yet, you obviously have to stick with the in home meetings. Rotate these around. Also, talk to each member and see what work that they might want help on with their own layouts! That way you can say “Next week’s meeting will be at Bob’s house where we will be working on ballasting track.” I know I could use help on my own layout (it’s on the floor). That might get people to come in. I know that I’d like people to help me on my layout, at least at this stage, than going to a club layout. Then the members that are more experienced can help out the less experienced members at their own homes.
Also, since some people won’t want help on their own layouts, they could give a class on something they know how to do, be it ballasting, weathering, wiring, laying track, storage, what tools are nice to have, etc.
Too bad you aren’t in South East PA. I would probably join!!
Texas Zephyer, that was great advice, thank you!
this one is another for the favorites
People join a club for a reason. Make sure that reason is clearly stated in ALL publicity and the meetings stay true to that reason. If you stray off the main reason (as this forum tends to do) people will not come back. Even our young people have too much to do to go out for a reason and find themselves doing something else…
One reason we started this club was the reason of working on our layouts. ARTHILL, I know what you mean about straying off since I’m 17 and so are the other members of our club. Another reason for the club is to have something positive to do on the weekends. One problem is that we are about the only ones in our high school that like trains and enjoy the hobby so that might make local recruiting a problem. If anyone wants to know we are located in Fairfield IL. You can email me if you need more info.
Thanks for the info.
ICMR
After re-reading my post I thought a bit of follow up would be good on this point. You can’t do what I stated above unless the club has well defined goals and standards. So that might be the most important thing. As ARTHILL said or at least implied, if the purpose of the club doesn’t match the wants/needs of the members they won’t stay around very long. It is better to let them screen themselves up front. Then there are no hard feelings later.
I posted in the hope that our experience can help some other model railroaders. And hopefully stir up some more good ideas from other people.
And that brings up another thought. It is a club, no one will every have everything the way they want, the quality they want, or even organized like they want. Everyone must accept that fact going in. Compromise, chat, share, learn, and have fun.
Thank you everyone for your replies.
They helped a lot.
ICMR
your club is a teen club right, how is it goin, im thinking of starting one in my area.
because im a teen, i dont have the money for a finished place, but i have a dicent size layout, tons of storage space, and a hockey table for brake time and for people who dont have a job at the moment, and i might be able to get a frige that isnt getting use from my garage down in my basement, unfortunatly it isnt finished. but do you think it will effect members joining that much because it’s for teens. i think it would be understandable to not have a finished space. anyway i want to make it so club members can make there own modual that they can work on at home and during meetings. also we could take the moduals to train shows. and the moduals could hook up to my big layout in my basement. do you think i would have alot of problems with it?
Teas and Coffees - make sure someone does this important job sometime during the evening. Nothing better than standing around (or sitting) drinking a hot drink and chatting! The social element of the evening is as important as the practical building of the layout.
I and one of my fellow club members share the tea making responsibilities week by week. Donations only into a pot, a great way to learn everybodies name while finding out what drink they want.
Ian
Have you got any kind of dues? I ask this because it may be a deterrent to enter. If you do, and you kinda need to in order to purchase rolling stock and other supplies just for the club, keep them reasonable. A club local to me has 2 or 3 levels of membership. The full membership is $25 a month. I find that to be a little too much for me, but they have to pay rent on their building, and they have a HUGE layout to maintain. They also have an associate membership that is something like $12.50, you just don’t have any voting rights. They also have a trial mebership 0f $15 for 3 months to see if the recruit is actually interested.
I for one am glad to see that you at least have enough interest at your age to even consider starting a club. It is a great hobby, and I enjoy seeing the younger crowds, gives me hope that X-box won’t rule the world.
Glenn
The club I am a member of a relax group…We have our rules and by laws of course but,we never ask a member to do anything on our called work Saturdays…Want to come and talk fine show up…Want to help do the work? Start cleaning.Want to run your GG1 ok.Fine thats what the club’s layout is for.
We do have operating periods that we run certain eras to include all steam operation and we have free for all operations night where any thing can be ran including European equipment-usually a “Flying Scottsman” type of train.
Hey,we even have a antique operation where models from the 50/60s are ran!!
The bottom line is a club MUST be fun for the members and the members should never feel they are bound by strict rules or given a job they may not want or uncomfortable doing.
Remember members pays dues and those dues pays the bills.Lose members because your rules are to strict to include area modeling you start loosing member…
Lost members=lost dues=death of club.
Keep the club a fun place for all members.Weed out the trouble makers or those that want to rule with a iron fist by having iron fist rules.
Above all remember this is a HOBBY a past time and NOT A JOB of DREAD.
i dont think im going to charge anything for the club at the moment because its a new club and would need as many members as possible to start, but maby suggest people give donations, or buy cars to run on the layout.
also what kind of things do you need in terms of the track plan of the layout to make it fun, and prototypical for multiple people to operate. im in the track planning stage and almost ready to start laying track. ill post a track plan soon
chewie what part of southeast pa are you in and is there a club near by for Ho. I live in the pottsville area.