19. Membership Drive Committee

[Christopher Mallon]

In that case, I'm not sure why clubs wouldn't just print up their own brochures, if they don't mind not having them of printshop quality paper/glossy. That's unless clubs actually care to give the CFC a plug in a club brochure, along with their own advertising.

What is the #1 complaint when you try to get clubs to run more CFC events, or to even go CFC-Only as some of the larger ones are?

They have trouble "selling" the CFC to prospective members.

Well here's a chance for the CFC to help them with that and at the same time help themselves.

[Kevin Pacey]

What is the #1 complaint when you try to get clubs to run more CFC events, or to even go CFC-Only as some of the larger ones are?

They have trouble "selling" the CFC to prospective members.

Well here's a chance for the CFC to help them with that and at the same time help themselves.

Well, at the moment the only thing I think I can see the CFC helping non-CFC oriented clubs (i.e. those who don't run CFC rated events normally, or require CFC membership) with is to save a (small?) bit of time. That's if they are using a printer at a club member's home to print out a brochure pre-designed for them by the CFC, rather than having that club member designing a purely club advertising content brochure from scratch and then printing it out on their printer.

If we wish to get even that type of club (which may well be much more common than CFC-oriented clubs) to advertise the CFC through their brochures then at the moment I think a printshop quality 50%-50% cost-shared CFC-club brochure may be more advisable.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

No, that's not what I had in mind. We were thinking about doing a whole new brochure and sending it electronically to clubs, who could add info to the back panel and then print it themselves.

That seems more sensible and flexible than printing up a bunch of expensive pamphlets which could quickly become dated.

[Kevin Pacey]

That seems more sensible and flexible than printing up a bunch of expensive pamphlets which could quickly become dated.

Yes, after thinking it over a bit, I've concluded it's not worth trying to improve our chances of having non-CFC oriented clubs advertise us by means of having expensive 50%-50% cost-shared pamphlets. That type of club could well prefer to go ahead and make their own 100% club content expensive pamphlet if they felt like having an expensive pamphlet at all.

As I look at a Hull (Gatineau) club pamphlet at home, I see it's printed on the same size non-glossy printer paper that I have at home. Their pamphlet includes a logo and photographic images. I don't know how much difficulty it took to produce. There were 3 seperate sections of printed material, on both sides of the paper, which was simply folded twice to show each of the three sections of printed material.

[Paul Leblanc]

We handed out hundreds of flyers for the Victoria Chess Club in 2009 and 2010. We posted them on notice boards, we had them in the libraries. Then we asked every new player who showed up at the club how they heard of us. Almost every single one said they found us by searching the web for Victoria Chess Club. No one mentioned the flyers.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

We handed out hundreds of flyers for the Victoria Chess Club in 2009 and 2010. We posted them on notice boards, we had them in the libraries. Then we asked every new player who showed up at the club how they heard of us. Almost every single one said they found us by searching the web for Victoria Chess Club. No one mentioned the flyers.

I think that any advertising strategy which doesn't rely primarily on an online presence and web searches is probably a waste of time and money in this age of internet and smartphones.

[Michael von Keitz]

I wish to propose striking a CFC Membership Drive Committee. I understand that there was a (one man) Membership Drive Committee in 2010-11 (Bob Gillanders), but that there is no such committee for 2011-12 at present. I am willing to serve on such a committee, should it be struck.

I am willing to contact ex-members by email (if the CFC is not currently doing so), as part of a possible membership drive, if I can be provided with a list of ex-members' email addresses.

Kevin Pacey presented his proposal that a CFC Membership Drive Committee be struck. $500 had been set aside in the 2010/11 budget for the production of pamphlets. The main suggestion brought forward in discussion was that of pursuing this pamphet program for the current year, where anecdotal evidence seemed to suggest that web-based advertising was to be preferred. In addition, it was suggested that if pamphlets were to be produced, perhaps they should be offered electronically as a club resource on the CFC website. With Kevin chairing, the committee will further investigate various advertising strategies.