Some Maine Clubs Giving Up

[Old Thumper 150]

Portland Press Herald Article

[John Mercier 36]

5 hours ago, Old Thumper said:

Portland Press Herald Article

Maine will probably follow NH into the Club Membership Incentive model in the next few sessions.

[Saluda 110]

 (To article)

Edited December 3, 2017 by Saluda

[smallengineguy 88]

I think that's everywhere. I went to a meeting today, probably 18 people there. I think myself and one other person were the only ones there under 65... only going to get worse.

[dirt dummy 105]

On 12/3/2017 at 1:38 PM, John Mercier said:

Maine will probably follow NH into the Club Membership Incentive model in the next few sessions.

And that will help how?

[PolarisCobra 132]

The financial model is different in Maine. Registration money does not necessarily get to clubs, it can wind up in town general funds from what I understand. Moving to a model like in NH would funnel more money to clubs. Would not help with manpower, but they are struggling financially as well as from a shortage of helpers. 

[John Mercier 36]

It also, at the very least, makes riders aware of their clubs and the effort being put forth to benefit them.

I'm not stating that we do this well... but it at least presents us with a greater opportunity.

But I have to state... I really hate looking at riders as a source of income to a club... and hope that sometime in the future we develop a technological prowess to reach out to a greater percentage of the riders with information. I think that is where we fail.

 

[PolarisCobra 132]

I think the idea that Snowmobiling is self funding is a good thing. That means that riders need to pay for the costs of riding, so the fact is that riders are a source of income.

But I do agree that it would be great if many of us (me included) got more involved with their clubs. For me, it's tougher living where I do, but that excuse goes only so far. I will say that I have joined several different NH clubs over the years, always put my email address as part of the application, but have never received an email newsletter, or any other communication from the club once I sent in my registration fee. I know that volunteer man power (personpower??) is hard to come by, but I would feel more connected if some sore of newsletter came to my inbox from time to time. 

[American Iron Rider 9]

I think that mass emailing is so difficult it stops most clubs from doing it. Larger clubs with more income can hire a service, like Constant Contact, to send newsletters out to their members. A lot of the clubs use Facebook accounts as a way to get announcements out to the membership, without the cost of using a service like Constant Contact. Don't wait for the call to service...be pro-active and ask your club(s) if they have any work parties that could use another body! Check club websites and Facebook accounts I don't think there's a club anywhere that would turn down a volunteer to do trail work.

[Patriot 33]

11 hours ago, PolarisCobra said:

I think the idea that Snowmobiling is self funding is a good thing. That means that riders need to pay for the costs of riding, so the fact is that riders are a source of income.

But I do agree that it would be great if many of us (me included) got more involved with their clubs. For me, it's tougher living where I do, but that excuse goes only so far. I will say that I have joined several different NH clubs over the years, always put my email address as part of the application, but have never received an email newsletter, or any other communication from the club once I sent in my registration fee. I know that volunteer man power (personpower??) is hard to come by, but I would feel more connected if some sore of newsletter came to my inbox from time to time. 

I agree that money is part of the problem. But it is a small portion of it for the clubs. I would guess that 25% of the problem is money. The major problem is lack of help. A club can have a million bucks in the bank, but it is worth $0 if there is no one there to help. Will the threat of a club shutting down motivate people to help that club? Or will those people just join other clubs?

Regarding the email/communication, my club has struggled with it. Big time. It is the only vehicle we have to reach our members, and we have no way of knowing if we are reaching any of them. Do the emails go to junk mail? Do they go to the right people? Do people read them? Do the emails get rejected by the ISP? We have had all the above problems, with no CHEAP solution. Cheap is the operative term, as many clubs are operating on razor thin cash flow. Who wants to spend $$ on email, when it can be better spent improving the trail?

[jhwentworth 307]

33 minutes ago, Patriot said:

Who wants to spend $$ on email, when it can be better spent improving the trail?

If your club has no problem bringing in and retaining members, you're right. If you have flat or declining membership then there is no better use for your $$ than communication with your current and former members. It doesn't take a lot of technical skills to create a mailing list, and that's all you really need. Will it be perfect? Probably not, but if it hits half your members that's better than ignoring them. I belong to 5 clubs, but only two of them have a regular email newsletter and 1 has meeting announcements. An email list is easy, creating regular content is hard.

[John Mercier 36]

13 hours ago, PolarisCobra said:

I think the idea that Snowmobiling is self funding is a good thing. That means that riders need to pay for the costs of riding, so the fact is that riders are a source of income.

But I do agree that it would be great if many of us (me included) got more involved with their clubs. For me, it's tougher living where I do, but that excuse goes only so far. I will say that I have joined several different NH clubs over the years, always put my email address as part of the application, but have never received an email newsletter, or any other communication from the club once I sent in my registration fee. I know that volunteer man power (personpower??) is hard to come by, but I would feel more connected if some sore of newsletter came to my inbox from time to time. 

Source of income to the club. When it becomes ''club'' rather than ''system'', the connectivity that drives registrations fails.

 

[rneal55555 12]

14 hours ago, PolarisCobra said:

I think the idea that Snowmobiling is self funding is a good thing. That means that riders need to pay for the costs of riding, so the fact is that riders are a source of income.

But I do agree that it would be great if many of us (me included) got more involved with their clubs. For me, it's tougher living where I do, but that excuse goes only so far. I will say that I have joined several different NH clubs over the years, always put my email address as part of the application, but have never received an email newsletter, or any other communication from the club once I sent in my registration fee. I know that volunteer man power (personpower??) is hard to come by, but I would feel more connected if some sore of newsletter came to my inbox from time to time. 

You need to join mine.  Actually you should join where you ride of course your free to come here and ride anytime. 

[smallengineguy 88]

We have a website, and we send out E-mails once in a great while, but we also have a Facebook page, and that seems how most get/give communication for the most part.

[classicdmax 58]

I understand the Facebook movement I guess, I however do not have nor care to have a Facebook account. I’m from Rhode Island, and have been a paying member of groveton trailblazers since I got back on a machine, and as their clubhouse is only a 10min ride from my families camp. Dedicating volunteer time is always note difficult as I’m usually traveling with a purpose...but would like to get my hands dirty with club activities at some point. I frequent the area 2+ times a month and am always checking in on their site and there is very little info concerning club activities imo. As someone has previously mentioned, I suppose I could always email....but just prefer the web avenue

[captcaper 1]

In a lot of ways I'd like to see some clubs shut down and trails closed in areas so it would force volunteers to come in. I have done much work both on the trails and paper work  so I can throw stones. Or raise prices so much to ride we can hire people to do the work. And have a program were if you volunteer you get credit to the fees.  Some clubs of other types have this perfected alreay.

  So many ride and no one helps.   Typical of many volunteer organizations but none the less 

[jhwentworth 307]

3 hours ago, captcaper said:

"so it would force volunteers to come in"

Well, depending on forced volunteers to get the work done does sound a bit like a North Korean reeducation camp, but I understand your frustration. As for raising club membership prices, I agree that the prices are too low, but we have a lot of riders who disagree with us and price-shop for the lowest membership cost that provides the registration discount voucher.

Why don't people volunteer for their club? It's probably more likely that a person would volunteer for a club that's close to home with a trail system that fills that riders needs. The southern half of the state hasn't had good, consistent, riding for several years, and for a guy living in Salem, a Saturday morning work party in Stewartstown just doesn't work out. The days of people living and working in the towns where they ride are just about gone. The sledding support structure has to evolve to survive, but how? Small towns used to depend on all-volunteer fire departments, but during the week days there aren't many people available to take a call because they work out of town. For many of these small towns the answer has been hiring paid fire- fighters and EMTs and forming compacts to share resources. I don't know if similar resource sharing would work with the clubs.

If you believe, like I do, that the buyers establish the value of most goods and services, it appears that the true worth of our 7,000 mile trail system is about $100 per year. That doesn't give the clubs much room to compensate volunteers as they're getting only a slice of that $100 pie. The math just doesn't work very well.