The minutes of the May 20, 2019 ARRL Board Executive Committee were released a couple of days ago. Here are a few comments:
- In his report, President Rick Roderick, K5UR, is noted as being “concerned about the disconnect that Technician class licensees make up over half of the Amateur population, but only make up about 16% of ARRL membership. He emphasized that we need to focus on increasing ARRL membership and perhaps explore some new initiatives to enhance recruiting members.” Ya think? How about setting some membership goals?
- There were a couple of mentions of the Lifelong Learning project. In fact, the CEO’s report referred to it as the “Mintz + Hoke lifelong learning project.” Is Mintz + Hoke driving the project or is the ARRL?Kris Bickell, K1BIC, has been the ARRL’s Lifelong Learning Manager for a year now, but we’ve yet to see any progress on this project. As I’ve said before, without member participation—and I’ve yet to hear of any members being involved in this project—I doubt that it’s going to have the impact that the ARRL is hoping for.
- Apparently, the number ofVolunteer Counsels and Volunteer Consulting Engineers is diminishing. Directors are being encourage to recruit more of these folks.
- The board is still working on some kind of antenna restriction legislation. The minutes note, “Mr. Tiemstra updated the Executive Committee on the efforts to reassess the Amateur Radio Parity Act. The Legislative Committee of the Board is working on a plan of action to be presented to the full Board at its July meeting.”
- How about this? “Mr. Abernethy discussed the topic of a graduated life membership dues reduction after an individual had reached a certain age. The committee referred the topic to the Administration and Finance committee for consideration, asking for a recommendation to be presented to the full Board in January 2020.” I proposed this back in 2008.
- The board has established the “Ad Hoc Committee on Communications with ARRL Members, to review communications with members and member perceptions of League communications.” Their charter is to “consider which areas require enhancement, ways in which such communications might be enhanced and propose concrete changes in communications processes and methods by which improvements may be accomplished.” This ought to be interesting.
James says
I have talked to several Extra Class licensees and they told me they would like for ARRL to have only two class of licenses: Technician and General. I have tried to pass the Extra class exam, but haven’t passed yet. It was too hard for me. Why can’t we only have two class of license and make General the highest class? There is not to much difference between General and Extra. It’s something the ARRL might want to think about.
James, KI4HTC
Ron KX1W says
The ARRL has no say how the FCC sets up license requirements. Write your congressman.
Dave New, N8SBE says
Graduated life memberships are not new. As a data point, Mensa has had this for quite some time, and knowing them, it’s likely based on some mathematical actuarial (life expectancy) tables.
I ended deciding to get an ARRL life membership as I approached my 60’s thinking about what I would do to reduce monthly/yearly subscription costs going into retirement, and when I looked up the (then) current ARRL life costs, it worked out to about 20 years at that point. So, I figured I would outlive it, and took the bait. The ARRL makes it almost painless, by splitting up the payments quarterly over a couple of years (in the meantime you are an interim life member, assuming you keep up your payments), and they can put it on a credit card so you don’t forget.
Since that time, they’ve sharply raised their membership rates (both annual and life) so it’s a bit more challenging to justify the life rate, so a sliding scale for life memberships would be welcome. I bet they saw a drastic drop in new life memberships after they raised the rates.
If ARRL had been slowly increasing rates to keep up with inflation over the past couple of decades (I can’t recall right now when the last increase was, but it was quite a while ago), then they wouldn’t have shocked everyone so much with the recent big increase. Someone wasn’t minding the store, to let them get so much in arrears, before taking action.
Ron KX1W says
I think the LM rule was always 25 times annual dues. So, they haven’t raised anything except annual dues, and they just had their first annual dues increase in more than ten years. I got my LM for $300 back in 1980 or so.
Mike W8MRA says
Here’s what needs to be pondered:
Is the cost of membership just too high? Should the League’s first priority be lowering the cost of membership? Even if it means budget cuts?
We can discuss until Christmas what all the ARRL does. Advocate. Public service. Training. Mentoring. And I’m right there with you doing cartwheels with a set of pompoms talking how valuable an asset ARRL is for ham radio.
But it’s still a buck under $50 a year. That’s sticker shock for many thinking about joining or renewing.
Ron KX1W says
I don’t know, Mike. It’s way cheaper than many organizations at $1/week. I pay more annually for my Masonic memberships and my AAA dues are $150/year! I get a whole lot more from ARRL than I’ve ever received from AAA.