Brian, Sometime after Marty brought up the subject of collecting phone numbers just before Thanksgiving we began to revise the membership forms supplied to the field to provide a space for a phone number. The PDF application form that's downloadable from the website is being updated now to include space for a phone number, as will the QST membership ad. Whether to make supplying a phone number mandatory is a question on which reasonable people may differ. Granted, most people will provide a number if they are confident that it will not be shared with third parties or otherwise used inappropriately. However, if required to submit information that they don't want to share, some people either will not join or will just fill in a bogus number. More and more people do not have landline phones and rely entirely on their cell phones. This reduces the usefulness of telephone directories, including online lookups such as 411.com, which increases the desirability of our asking for a number. However, it also decreases people's willingness to supply one. There is quite a bit of "churn" in phone numbers, resulting either from area code changes and from people moving or otherwise having a reason to change their number. Members generally will tell us when they change address since they want to receive QST but seldom update their phone number. In short, we should ask for phone numbers and we are doing so, or will be shortly, on membership application forms. If the Board wants to make supplying a phone number a condition of being an ARRL member we will do so, but that seems to me to be a step too far. 73, Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org [mailto:arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org] On Behalf Of Brian Mileshosky Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 11:04 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:19776] ARRL member phone numbers Hi Everyone -- I believe this was discussed briefly in the past, but I'm finding it increasingly frustrating to look up a member in the directory found in ODV with intentions to call them on the phone for something, only to find that no phone number is on record. I know that this is a function of who voluntarily provides a phone number, but almost all of the problem is ours: we don't ask members for their phone number. There's no place for a phone number on the print form available on the website at https://www.arrl.org/resources/membership/membership_app.pdf and the online membership/renewal form doesn't require someone to provide a phone number...it's optional, which means more often than not someone just leaves it blank to move on to more important (i.e. required) information. Not sure about other Directors, but I like to have a personable conversation with members as needed, especially when I need to contact them about something timely. I kindly ask that the League return to the practice of requesting phone numbers for renewals and new memberships (i.e. modify the print form accordingly and modify the online form such that the phone number is among the other required information). This trivial modification will go a long way to helping us better represent and maintain contact with our members. Thanks and 73, Brian N5ZGT ARRL Director, Rocky Mountain Division On the web at www.RockyMountainDivision.org _______________________________________________ arrl-odv mailing list arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org http://reflector.arrl.org/mailman/listinfo/arrl-odv