Echoing Tom (I think), it's not the decline in membership that I find alarming so much as the decline in activity. We've had anecdotal evidence of this trend, but with the Readex survey we can quantify it not only in terms of the rising number of inactive licensees but also in terms of declining numbers of hours, and greater passivity (listening/monitoring as opposed to being on the air), among those who remain active. There is also declining attendance at hamfests and club meetings. So the pool of potential ARRL members is shrinking. Unless that trend is reversed, pulling new and returning members from the pool will be increasingly expensive and difficult. The 2004 plan reflects that: we're planning to spend more money on membership promotion just to stay even. Looking on the bright side, at least two of the specific agenda items for the upcoming Board meeting directly address how to expand the pool of potential members. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Frenaye, Tom (Dir, NE) Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 4:14 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9878] Membership growth The Recruitment and Retention Committee report that Rod distributed earlier today said: "...ARRL membership continues to decline at an alarming rate." Even though the last few month's data is roughly break-even, the report is really on target. We are currently have fewer full members than we have had since March 1992 - about 12 years ago. If you count associate members, foreign members and subscriptions, we have the lowest totals since October 1988 - more than 15 years ago. I'm just back from vacation and have not read through the budget/plan document yet but I hope we're going to be spending some money and resources to try to change things. I don't think we can do more than stem the tide by soliciting non-member hams - we need to generate real growth in the number of licensed hams (and in the number of new active hams). Interesting graph attached. 73 -- Tom ===== e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444