ARRL membership

Is the ARRL out of touch? You decide.

May 1, 2026 By Dan KB6NU 5 Comments

In his email announcing the publication of a Great Lakes Division newsletter, Director Scott Yonally, N8SY, usually includes a paragraph similar to the following:

So, grab a big glass of whatever makes you feel good, a sweet snack stolen from your wife’s pantry and sit back in your easy chair and have a great read!!

Now, I ask you, is Yonally out of touch or what?

First of all, many, if not most, hams look like they have had one too many “sweet snacks” already, and instead of sitting back in their easy chair, they should be out for a brisk walk.

Second, think about that phrase, “stolen from your wife’s pantry.” I guess that Yonally thinks that only married men are hams and read the newsletter. With those five words, Yonally has excluded:

teenage hams,
single hams,
female hams, and
hams (like me) that share the cooking duties with their spouses and consider the pantry “their pantry.”

I’m sure that Yonally isn’t being intentionally exclusive, but it’s the thoughtlessness that’s the issue here. It’s the same thoughtlessness that led the ARRL to think that offering the Gil mug as a membership-renewal incentive was a good idea. I’m continually amazed that the ARRL is still offering this mug.

This may be a small thing, but it’s a real thing, and I’d go so far as to say that it’s attitudes like this that are driving people away from the ARRL. People who don’t feel welcome, quit organizations when they feel excluded, and intentional or not, the ARRL certainly isn’t rolling out the welcome mat to many potential members.

Another ARRL member lost

April 22, 2025 By Dan KB6NU 13 Comments

Last week, I went to lunch with a ham friend of mine. This fellow has been a ham for more than 60 years, and an ARRL member for most of that time. As we were waiting for our food, he says to me, “My ARRL membership is up soon, and I don’t think that I’m going to renew.”

When I asked him why, he said, “Well, it used to be that you sent them 30 bucks and you got a book. Now, you send them 60 bucks, and you get nothing.”

It’s more than just that, though. He said that he hardly reads QST anymore. “There’s just not that much of interest to me in QST,” he said. And, he went on, you have to read it with a special reader.

This, and a recent episode of the DX Mentor podcast featuring ARRL CEO David Minster, NA2AA, has got me thinking that the reason ARRL membership is shrinking is that it’s losing touch with its membership and with potential members. Two things stuck out for me. The first was Minster’s description of his operation of the super station on Bonaire during some DX contest. I suppose it’s a normal thing for a rich guy like him, who is pulling down $350,000 a year from the ARRL, but how many hams are going to get a chance to do this?

The second thing that stuck out is that at about the 1:33:30 mark, DX Mentor host, Bill, AJ8B, commented, “It appears to me that there’s a real strong growth in The Technician Class license. So, overall, that’s got to be pretty exciting.”

Minster re-directed the conversation immediately into a discussion of ARRL membership. He said, “I get asked the question pretty regularly that you know, there’s 750,000 hams and there are only 150,000 in the ARRL. (Note: It’s well below 150,000 right now.) You guys are terrible.”

He tried to blow this off by noting that many members of the Mormon Church and Orthodox Jewish communities get licensed for emergency preparedness and disaster communications. At He said flat out, “They’re not hams.” To blow off anyone with an amateur radio license as “not a real ham” just doesn’t seem like the right attitude to me, and isn’t emergency and preparedness communications supposed to be one of the pillars of amateur radio?

Now, he did go on to say that new Techs need mentors to help them get more involved with amateur radio. I agree completely with him on that, and I tell everyone that takes my class to consider me their mentor, and if they ever have a question or need help, to contact me. I’m proud of the fact that many people who’ve taken my classes are now active hams and having fun with amateur radio.

At any rate, the impression I get is that Minster isn’t all that concerned with membership. He certainly didn’t give any indication of that in his DX Mentor appearance, and I don’t see the ARRL taking any serious steps to increase membership. Instead of truly being the “national association for amateur radio,” they’re becoming an ever-smaller association of guys they consider to be “real hams.”

They’ve lost touch with long-time members like my friend and who knows how many potential members. What this means is that, in the future, ARRL membership will continue to fall, both in the percentage of licensed radio amateurs and absolute numbers.

I used to think that I was the biggest thorn in the ARRL’s side, but…

March 20, 2025 By Dan KB6NU 3 Comments

I used to think that I was the biggest thorn in the ARRL’s side, but I now cede this title to my friend, Frank Howell, K4FMH. Since the beginning of the year, Frank has written a number blog posts, which I can only describe as “scathing.”

He’s gotten the attention of the ARRL’s CEO, too. ARRL CEO, David Minster, NA2AA, ends his April column with the admonition, “Reading the baseless conspiracy theories about ARRL does nothing to promote or protect amateur radio.” Are they baseless, though? I’ll let you read Frank’s meticulously-researched posts and decide for yourself.

In his January 18, 2025 post, “Many ARRL members couldn’t get there from here…So they left. Here’s how to get them back,” describes what he thinks is a major flow in how ARRL governance is organized and how that has led to a decrease in membership. His two main suggestions to remedy this are:

Replace the CEO with a COO hired from the non-profit sector.
Elect the President and other Officers directly by the membership.

Frank’s January 31, 2025 post, “They went down, down, down..and the flames are higher … but it’s not too late,” addresses the decline in ARRL membership. Frank notes that the percentage of licensed radio amateurs who are also ARRL members is now close to 16%. And yet, the only visible attempts at increasing membership are a raffle for new and renewing members that will benefit only a single ham and cheap coffee mugs for those renewing for three years.

The March 3, 2025 post, “Election Ethics and Bylaws of the ARRL: Are They Being Applied to Everyone?” addresses what Frank sees as a possible conflict of interest. He notes that the ARRL CEO does a little moonlighting as a real estate agent, even though By-Law 35 clearly states that the “[CEO’s] entire time shall be devoted to the duties as set forth above.” Frank asks, “Why is there such a different emphasis on election ethics while allowing a clear and specific violation of Bylaw 35 to go unchecked?”

In Frank’s latest post, “Only the Shadow (Board) Knows…,” he addresses what some refer to as the “shadow board.” Frank describes the shadow board as a “a subset of Division Directors who I’m told have teamed-up with the non-voting Board member CEO and President to form a caucus.”

Frank notes:

It is not authorized in the Bylaws.This group’s “shadow” actions circumvent public disclosure of League business discussions. Why? One source states below it is because they fear some Directors will actually tell their member constituents—you know, the dues-paying ones who vote for them—what is on the horizon for ARRL actions in the future.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, Frank thinks that the existence and actions of the shadow board are in violation of IRS rules for governance of charitable organizations.

If you’re concerned about how the current board of directors and officers are running the ARRL, I hope that you will read Frank’s blog posts and raise a little cain with your director. I think you’ll find that these issues are not as “baseless” as the ARRL CEO would have you believe.

ARRL membership

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