Next Years Membership

[Mat-Moo]

Might be worth re-calculating the postage costs of the mags, got to be close to the 5mm mark... and if it goes up might need to cover the cost (ok maybe not £5 though). If there is no change then no problem, and as I said the club didn't run out of money, so keeping it the same is no problem. However it looks like it will need to change in the not too distant future imo. Calendar as a first come first served, no problem, although would the money be going to charity again or to the club?

[Guest Bob's Babe]

Any profit after posyage and costs goes to charity.....as a club we do not want to make a profit from members

 

SUE

[Guest mark kingston]

£20 including a calendar gets my vote too.

[will]

Thinking about it I think Sues right... You can't force calendars onto members that obviously don't want them. It's not like nobody was told about them... they were advertised in the mag so every member knew about it, they just didn't want one.

 

If I'm honest I really didn't fancy doing it again this year as it takes quite a bit of time to produce and it was suppose to be a one off. Saying that though I am happy to do it again if everyone thinks it's worth it?

 

Will

[Guest chris brown]

I'm all in favor of £20 either including or extra for the calendar but I can see it from Sue's viewpoint. Could we not "farm" out some of the stuffing and posting? I would be more than willing to do my bit.

[Guest micky bigthumbs]

Just a suggestion to give Sue and Tim a hand ..where my wife used to work they had a mail shot twice a year. With a couple of people typing envelopes and 10 to 15 packing leaflets and catalogues.is it not possible that Tim could get hold of a large enough building or tent and enough hoodie volunteers to pack and post and get it out the way in a day giving Tim and Sue more time and less stress

[Guest Bob's Babe]

Lots of nice ideas guys and thanks for wanting to reduce the load.

 

To send stuff out to others to help just seems to me to mean two people doing something instead of one.

I don't object to the level of stuff we do now, after 3 years, 10? mags we have a good system and things go quite well from our point of view adding to it is a pain but on a smaller scale we can cope

 

Postage is changing anyway this month so we will be doing some investigating on that front, but I don't like the idea of putting membership stuff in with a calendar....some of you lot miss fliers in with mags and membership cards/stickers in with the letter

 

We need to be asking Will if this can be done again (but on a smaller scale??) and what the costs are, it would be unfair on him to be doing it for nothing again.

 

Why raise membership costs to £20 when we don't need the money in the bank???

SUE

 

Micky: this would only work if we did all 800 in one go....we have to wait for everyone to pay

[will]

I don't mind doing it for nothing as the profits go to charity

 

Steve the one who will be able to tell you about cost implications as he deals and manages the print side.

 

It might cost the same as it's quite a small print run.

[swan]

Hi,

 

While it does not bother me what the membership fee is,

 

the signing up of new members is important.

 

We have at the moment community members who

 

choose not to pay the 15 quid to join the club proper.

 

One can suppose that it is MONEY!! . If they will not join at £15

 

then 20 will be a definate non starter.

 

Swan

[Guest salty_monk]

Maybe we could get RHSC to offer them in their Ebay shop

 

I don't mind either way, as long as my mate gets me one out to America like last year

 

Will - I might be able to help you out with image resizing etc in Photoshop but I might be more hindrance than help being so far away... let me know.

 

Dan

[Guest micky bigthumbs]

Swan you always get free loaders..the chap that is always dodging the last round ..i think Sue and Tim and the Wills and Mats and many others do a fantastic job i think if they need help they should ask and as members we should be more than willing to help

[Guest TerryBarry]

Having read the recent postings on this subject – I have some comments to make

I can’t be bothered to take quotations from each posting so I will just list them out.

 

Will – I realise that this is an major imposition on your time, but I thought that the ’06 edition was excellent. Could we negotiate a fee for your input ??

 

Sue – I assume that we are including the calendar “gratis” onto the current £15 fee - so not much has changed.

 

Chris B – I would be prepared to stuff envelopes, label and send out – But somehow they would have to be shipped to darkest Surrey. I received my "Size Guide" from the Royal Mail today

 

Swan – If we dropped the membership fee to 15 pence – I’m sure there would still be some who would not join on principle.

[Swan Jnr]

i think that once someone has made the decision to buy a membership they probably arent going to quibble about the extra fiver.

 

from a sales point of view an owners club seems a pretty unique case, since there is almost no competition: if you have a robin hood where else are you going to join? tiger? quantum?

 

the only option you have is to buy or not to buy, and i guess that is reliant on what you see as the benefits of joining: some people are just joiners and like to be a part of something bigger than themselves, for the friendship etc. These people will probably pay within reason, whatever you charge. And some may weigh up whether its worth their investment before parting with any cash. These are the people that its worth trying to persuade to join if you want to increase numbers. To do that you either make it more attractive to be a member: free gifts, dancing girls etc or you make it less attractive not to be a member, by removing some of the priveledges that non members enjoy currently say by restricting access to a wider area of the community forum; maybe all the technical areas? Another solution would be to give full access to the whole but limit your free usage to to 100 posts. Once you see how great the board is, imagine the thought of that being taken away?

 

At present a non member can attend all the shows on the club stand, go on club runs, post on the board in every area other than loans or sales. If you're not a "joiner" £20 to access two areas of a forum, or £15 for that matter may seem a lot for this difference.

 

it seems to me that the forum and its information is the single largest resource that the club has, with an incredible value (almost every company would kill for an area where staff exchanged knowledge as well as guys do on here: and many have spent millions lf pounds trying to acheive it and failing) so if you wanted to leverage more memberships this to me would have to play a part somewhere.

 

if we just wanted to sell more calenders, i know it may involve more hassle but how about having a small stand (just a flip chart frame) and advertise and sell the calenders at all the shows? i dont think anyone else will be making a calender of a quality that can rival ours and people with other cars may be prepared to buy our calenders just because they are so good, as long as they know about them. the kit car shows are a great opprutnity to maket these and the club itself.

 

just my two penneth

[Guest stu205]

less attractive not to be a member, by removing some of the priveledges that non members enjoy currently say by restricting access to a wider area of the community forum; maybe all the technical areas?

 

I have always been amazed that the club dosent already do this, in a way it shows what a cracking bunch we are but like Swan says someone can have all the benafits of club membership without coughing up, and whilst a membership of over 1000 is a fantastic amount theres proberbly another 500 who are freeloading on the back of members good will, not to mention the extra £1000 (£2 profit per calender??) the club could be giving to charity

 

 

*JMHO

[Guest paul thompson]

I am no longer a member as I no longer have a car. I do enjoy using the community though and often post replies to people asking questions if I can help them. If I were unable to do this because I were not a member then I'm afraid you would lose my input because I would not be prepared to pay for this privelige. At soem time in the future I intend to get another kit car and it is going to be a budget car, so unless RHSC whack up the prices, it's probably going to one of thiers. I thinkl it would be a shame to exclude people from offering advice to community members that need it because they did not join the club proper. If anyone has a problem with community members not paying dues, you can see thier status easily enough, just don't answer thier questions. Not the spirit of this board I am used to. Sorry gone off topic a bit there. BAck to the calenders, I stand by my original comment that RHSC should be encouraged to contribute to the costs and I like the idea of promoting them on teh club stand, and RHSC could even sell them at shows themselves, it publicises just how many well made cars of thier marque are out there.

JMHO