The June 2019 issue of RadCom, the Radio Society of Great Britain’s equivalent to QST, contains the article, Building a strong local club structure, by Richard Thomas, G4JJP. In the article, G4JJP proposes changes to the way we organize amateur radio clubs.
Citing the dwindling membership of most local clubs, one of the proposals he makes is that instead of many small clubs, he proposes that we form more regional associations and that this regional association would exist primarily online, except for perhaps a club station. Organizing in this way would reduce the overhead costs of running a traditional club.
I would say that in addition to forming regional associations, we need to make them more like real nonprofit organizations, and that includes paid staff. There’s only so much that you can do with volunteers. And, running a club like this is going to be even more work than running a smaller club. It’s already difficult to find folks to be be club officers for small clubs. I don’t think that there will be that many people who are willing and able to run one of these regional associations solely on a volunteer basis.
Bob K0NR says
Dan,
Thanks for passing this along. I think the article hits on some important issues for amateur radio. I do believe that active and engaged local radio clubs are a key part of attracting and retaining new radio amateurs. Unfortunately, in the USA, most radio clubs operate independently without much help from the ARRL or anyone else.
There are successful clubs that are thriving and growing their membership. The ones I see doing this have a strong orientation towards Technician license classes, educational programs, training and Maker activities. My sample size is small, so there may be other ways for clubs to be successful.
You probably recall the concept of the Un-Club, which is roughly “keep the formal structure and cost of the club to a minimum,” see http://www.arrl.org/the-un-club
This is one way to deal with the overhead of running a club. It does not have to be expensive.
The Radcom article talks about “Participant” members (those that are contributing to the club) and “Associate” members (those that use the club’s services but don’t contribute). In fact, the article says that “Associate” members “don’t join” the club. Well, that seems like kind of a problem. The article gives good examples of how modern life is very transactional in nature, with people going online to access information (often at no cost) instead of joining organizations. The author proposes attracting these Associate members but charging them for services as they are used instead of membership dues (“subscriptions”). I am not sure this will actually work, due to the free nature of online resources.
I do think there is a powerful idea in the article concerning networking clubs together regionally to improve efficiency and services to members. In particular, having access to a club station either in person or via remote control could be really important in the era of antenna restrictions. Small clubs can’t afford the time and expense to maintain a station, so banding together would help. I’m not sure how big a “region” should be…probably depends on the population density of the area. For example, the states of Michigan or Colorado are probably too big to be a region, so maybe a regional club network needs to be a portion of a state. Perhaps a tiered solution with the ARRL at the national level, then a series of regional club networks and, of course, local clubs. (Oh, geez, this is starting to sound like a bureaucracy.) I still think that local clubs are key because they provide face-to-face interaction and hands-on mentoring that is most effective.
Well, I should have made this a blog post.
73 Bob K0NR
John Haworth says
A great recent example is the POTA group. It’s not so much a club, but a common activity generating a virtual “club”. For Michigan, this could easily be defined as an informal Regional Club, Michigan Parks on the Air.
73 John NU8M
Dave New, N8SBE says
To me, the draw of a local club is having face-to-face meetings, and learning something interesting from either a visitor or a club member presentation. It’s difficult enough to get folks to drive across town to a meeting. I can’t imagine getting a much larger crowd (commensurate with the ham population in the coverage area) to show up for a regional (whatever size that may be) meeting on a monthly basis.
I belong to an active local club, and also to a regional contest club, whose territory is a radius around an arbitrary geographical center, as defined by the ARRL for ‘medium-sized’ contest clubs. The contest club has a couple of face-to-face meetings a year, which is required in the bylaws, to transact business, but otherwise, all interaction is via the mailing list. At least one meeting a year includes tours of one or more contest stations, etc.
And oh yeah, I also belong to a ‘non-club’, which meets every week for breakfast. We typically have 6-8 or more folks show up to this. There have been unplanned ‘show and tells’ where we bring the latest DMR HT, hot spot, or kit to show off, and recently we’ve been blessed to have our ARRL Section Manager come and share with us on a regular basis.
And oh yeah, oh yeah, I belong to three QRP clubs, one state-wide and the other two international in scope. They all put out regular newsletters/journals (in print — what would I do if I didn’t have reading material when I’m in ‘Executive Session”?)
My opinion is that the lifeblood of the hobby requires regular interaction with like-minded folks, be it contesting topics, or group project builds, or having a regular excuse to just get together over a cold 807.
Sterling N0SSC says
I think the younger generation is leading the push towards online-only clubs. YARC, YACHT, and YOTA are a few zero-fee organizations that primarily exists online in chat programs like Discord and Telegram, or on Facebook, and are very successful.
YARC (https://yarc.world) is already up to a few hundreds members, and nearly a thousand participants in Discord; about 60-100 are online at any given time. If you think about it, the “meeting” is never-ending; as long as people are online, people can meet and talk to each other. Occasionally, a few people will hop into voice chat and talk, and we also use VC to manage our HF and DMR/Echolink nets and as an after-net chat session since it’s a whole lot more reliable, high quality, and more people are on it.
The board has a monthly-ish meeting using Discord voice chat and Google Docs/Drive.
The only time people meet face to face is during large planned events and meetups at ham radio conventions.
Contrast that to my local clubs, which are mostly in-person based, with traditional meetings and breakfasts. It’s a different paradigm, but there’s a clear reason why it doesn’t seem to jive with younger people. I tried to bridge the gap by introducing Slack to the club to jumpstart communication, but it’s gone dead since that generation isn’t used to being online 100% of the time.
Randy Schulze says
Who said clubs are dying?! In the Kansas City Metro Area, there are over thirty, active amateur radio clubs which are thriving! These are not including the other organizations, such as ARES, CERT, and RACES,which arealso thriving; these are actually clubs. While many are general purpose, some are focused on a specialty, or specific aspect of amateur radio. It’s not uncommon to meet hams which belong to more than one club.
As far as I know with the exception of one, (Ararat Shrine,) none of these clubs have a club station. Aside from building, housing, and maintaining a station, what are the overhead expenses? Admittedly there are a few, by from the perspective of the basics, overhead costs are low. If they’re not, you’re doing something wrong. Incorporating is done not as a means of managing finances, but for managing liability. When you think about it, most clubs monthly membership dues cost between $15 and $20 annually. That’s lees than the cost of a fast food meal. Your dues last for entire year. Is this really a hardship?!
While some like to keep their clubs small, I also see many clubs growing in membership. The key, in my opinion, is to keep the club active. Provide monthly presentations that are interesting and engaging. Participate in events and activities. Sponsor building projects. Most importantly, encourage the rank and file members to join in and manage activities and events. One member asked, “But what do I do if I make a mistake?” My reply was that I expect some mistakes. Learn from the mistake and grow! But most importantly, have fun!!!
I agree with the concept of Regional Coordination. Such is the aim of the Mo-Kan Regional Council. This is not a club of individual members, but is a council of clubs and organizations where we can share the knowledge and resources of the combined clubs, but we don’t dictate to the clubs on how to run their own organizations.
I have always advocated that all new hams join a club. If for no other reason, than to meet like minded people who also have an interest in amateur radio. Everything else is a bonus!
So do we actually have a problem, or do we have a solution looking for a problem?
RANDY SCHULZE
KDØHKD
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Larry Staples, W0AIB says
I agree with Randy. We have an abundance of the kind of hams who are willing to unselfishly use their talents for the benefit of others for the overall betterment of amateur radio.
Mark Campbell, NRØR says
Sounds to me like some club traditions of sitting around grumbling are not exactly popular, and the free market economy of ham radio operators choosing to vote with their feet to leave a boring inactive club is working just fine. Hoping to attract young people into your club so that the boring traditionalists will have someone to order around tends to backfire.
Any club whose members spend their time whining about having to do work, wishing someone would hire professional staff to do the work for them, or whining that a “traditional club” membership is dwindling deserves to be disbanded.
Adding more politics and forming larger clubs with a bigger inertial mass of traditional inaction with bigger budgets to spend on unpopular traditions that do nothing is not the answer.
The worst is when traditional clubs actively try to block interesting and worthwhile projects from getting off the ground.
Any club whose members step up and DO worthwhile things for their fellow club members and for the benefit of their community will thrive. If you want your club to thrive, be a member that does interesting things and hams and prospective hams will flock to your club. Otherwise at least be a ham that gets out of the way of those that will do interesting things and cheer them on.
Edwin G. Delgado (WP3WC) says
Ham radio needs to refresh its face worldwide in order to keep their relevance on a day to day basis. And clubs are one of the most important tools available, Since technology is developing so fast (daily) the importance and usefulness of the tools available is also always changing (try to track cellphones technology, as an example of this). So, ham radio enthusiasts body, in general, must be a living updating force. Resources on line and the evolution of transceivers, antennas and related technology is not enough to achieve this. Ham radio must move as near and relevant to walking people as possible, and joining forces of ham radio enthusiasts’ to do this is the only way to achieve these goals.. But the organization of clubs should change from the traditional way we have done it worldwide up to now. Not only ham fests, training, exam sessions and nets are enough since that only serves almost exclusively those who are already in the ham radio hobby. We must integrate our RF interest with other purposes and/or technologies and always try to make them relevant to our daily way of living. We must identify new ways to make our hobby relevant to people that only relates to technology by using the web, the cellphones and computers. How we do this? By moving our clubs to our communities and to make our hobby less challenging to them. New technologies such as 3D printing, local wireless networks (LoRAn, Zigbee, Bluethoot, IoT, Home Automation and so on) and hands on experimentation should be integrated to ham radio and make their joint ventures available to build small innovative projects where ordinary (non-ham) people might see the usefulness of ham radio knowledge and experience. But again, traditional ham clubs must evolve to a more working lab environment in order to make them less mysterious and more relevant to different types of interests. Clubs must look outwards instead of only inwards, clubs must fulfill as much as possible with its members interests as well as new comers out of them. And, yes, instead of having big heavily structured organizations ham radio clubs must be small flexible organizations which should come together through bigger umbrella type nominal organization where they can share goals, interests and communication tools. We might think that ham fests and meetings might fulfill these goals and they do. But they should do it not only to ham enthusiasts but also to ham clubs as well. Let us dare to innovate and to evolve so our hobby and ham radio interest keep its relevance and its life. Let us join our clubs into regional and local organizations so we can multiply our efforts and move ham radio to a more “normal
way of life relevant to non-ham radio people. 73 to all….