Page 3 of 9 FirstFirst 12345 ... LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 88

Thread: CFC - Membership Drive?

  1. #21
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Gillanders
    One huge untapped reservoir of potential members is the general public. To them, organized chess in Canada is invisible. People are often surprised to hear there is a chess club in their community! A Chess Federation? you've got to be kidding! A simple brochure program, 50% CFC content and 50% local club content, will do wonders.
    Once I asked a then-Governor about the general public not being able to find out about the CFC, even if they were interested in playing chess.

    His reply was "Come on. With a little thought they could google the words 'Chess Canada' and the CFC website reference would pop up on the first page".

    Quite often, evidently, people don't go out of their way to think that deeply. They may assume there is no organized chess in Canada. The CFC needs to be more proactive.

    Assuming there isn't the money for a major city newspaper advertising campaign, how much could the CFC afford to print up x brochures and mail them to citizens at random (or have them posted in public buildings)? That's the sort of thing a membership committee would need to know from the Executive before recommending it as an action to take.

    Another thing would be to establish whether a membership committee can get approval from the Executive to have the office impliment at least some committee recommendations, without needing to have them voted on by the Governors.

  2. #22

    Default Day to Day Administration

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Pacey
    Another thing would be to establish whether a membership committee can get approval from the Executive to have the office impliment at least some committee recommendations, without needing to have them voted on by the Governors.
    Hi Kevin:

    The way I see it, the Executive administer the organization on a day to day basis and so normal management decisions can be made by them. Only in the case of major administrative decisions, would they come back to the governors ( eg. ending the outsourcing contract with EKG ).

    But if it entails a policy matter, then yes it would have to come back to the governors.

    Bob

  3. #23
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Pacey
    Assuming there isn't the money for a major city newspaper advertising campaign, how much could the CFC afford to print up x brochures and mail them to citizens at random (or have them posted in public buildings)?
    Now that my memory has been jogged, I recall a former CFC Executive member once telling me that the CFC once randomly mailed out to x citizens (though perhaps without local club info included). There wasn't too much success, but maybe the wrong random people were mailed . At least mailing ex-members might be a good idea for sure.

    If only the CFC had a comprehensive record of its/(Canada's chess) organizational history, of successes and failures. So much experience is gradually lost...
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 07-10-2010 at 10:33 AM.

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    1,560

    Default Targeted advertising.....

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Pacey
    Now that my memory has been jogged, I recall a former CFC Executive member once telling me that the CFC once randomly mailed out to x citizens (though perhaps without local club info included). There wasn't too much success, but maybe the wrong random people were mailed .

    If only the CFC had a comprehensive record of its/(Canada's chess) organizational history, of successes and failures. So much experience is gradually lost...
    Any mass media blitz or random mailing would be prohibitively expensive. While there are thousands of potential members out there, they still represent a very small percentage of the general public. This is chess, not hockey! We need to target our message. Brochures placed on community bulletin boards in arenas, libraries, schools, and community centres. CFC can help get the brochures printed, and the local clubs get them distributed.

  5. #25
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Gillanders
    Any mass media blitz or random mailing would be prohibitively expensive. While there are thousands of potential members out there, they still represent a very small percentage of the general public. This is chess, not hockey! We need to target our message. Brochures placed on community bulletin boards in arenas, libraries, schools, and community centres. CFC can help get the brochures printed, and the local clubs get them distributed.
    The local clubs might well need to be encouraged a bit to help do their part. At least some might even already be printing up their own brochures to distribute as you describe, with 100% club info content (i.e. no reference on the brochure to the CFC - in fact at least some non-CFC oriented clubs might see that as a drawback, or superfluous, to their own cause).

    Perhaps a CFC club liason person (on the membership committee, or an officer) would be helpful. Also, a President's message in the CFC newsletters, encouraging clubs to pitch in (besides reporting on the state of chess in Canada/[the CFC], as Kalev Pugi used to do back in the 1970s), might not hurt either.

  6. #26

    Default Public Relations Coordinator

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Pacey
    Perhaps a CFC club liason person (on the membership committee, or an officer) would be helpful.
    Motion 2010-17 at the AGM establishes the position of Public Relations Officer ( replacing the old Director of Publicity ). One of the established tasks is:

    " 8C. The Public Relations Coordinator will be responsible for promoting the image of the CFC and for promoting chess generally to the public. As such the Public Relations Coordinator will, among other things:

    - work with chess clubs and organizers across Canada to raise the profile of the CFC and chess generally; "

    A combination brochure campaign, by CFC and local clubs, working together, is exactly what was envisioned by this motion.

    If it passes, then this non-executive officer should be able to be looked to to head up a membership drive committee to tackle this project.

    What we need is a good volunteer, assuming the motion passes.

    Bob

  7. #27
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Hi Bob

    My opinion would be that you are asking a lot of such an officer, especially since he is not on the Executive.

    Having an officer devoted solely to club liason might be one way to begin to share all the tasks that your proposed officer of Public Relations Co-ordinator is supposed to carry out. I can see more people being interested in being a club liason officer than might lately be having thoughts about being an officer just in charge of publicity for the CFC (as would remain the case if your motion fails to pass).

    Even for the old officer job description of being in charge of just publicity, the person for the job should ideally, at the least, meet the following criteria:

    1. Be able to give interviews with media without being tongue-tied;
    2. Be reasonably photogenic in case they get TV or internet exposure;
    3. In case of an interview they really should be able to state that they are (reasonably well) employed or retired from such;
    4. They should be able to arrange their own transportation (e.g. own a car).

    In the chess world, at the least, one cannot take all this for granted.

    An officer for club liason, on the other hand, could probably function fairly well just simply using a phone, or the internet.
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 07-10-2010 at 02:12 PM.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Gillanders
    Any mass media blitz or random mailing would be prohibitively expensive. While there are thousands of potential members out there, they still represent a very small percentage of the general public. This is chess, not hockey! We need to target our message. Brochures placed on community bulletin boards in arenas, libraries, schools, and community centres. CFC can help get the brochures printed, and the local clubs get them distributed.
    Random mailing might not be so prohibitively expensive, unless there are costs other than stamps, and (already on hand?) paper and envelopes.

    A well thought out random mail brochure campaign might succeed better than the last time it was attempted by the CFC (regrettably I wasn't told the results), if the mailed brochures are well thought out. A word or two from the CFC president, and stating that lessons are available in Canada, might be included, for example.

    On my first point of this post, how much can the CFC afford to budget for randomly mailing?

    For illustrating that such a random mail campaign may be affordable, and may be practical for producing at least rather limited success, consider the following:

    1) 500 brochures sent out at a cost of approx. 60 cents each (for stamps).
    That's 500x.60 or $300.

    2A) For the CFC to break even, how many new members need to be signed up as a result?

    2B) Well, let's take the average value of all the CFC's portion of the aquired memberships (adult, junior, etc) as $33+1/3, for the sake of argument.

    2C) Then superfically we would seem to need 300/(33+1/3) or 9 new members to sign up. However that conclusion isn't quite right, because historically I believe there is a turn-over rate of about one-third every year of CFC members (i.e. old members quiting to be replaced by new ones). So lets solve an approx. equation that is a bit more accurate:

    2D) Solve X+(18/27)X+(12/27)X+(8/27)X = 9 to get the number of new members needed to break even

    where X represents the number of new CFC members who sign up in the first year.

    In the equation, (18/27), or 2/3, represents the number of new members signed up the previous year who would sign up again based on the turn-over rate.

    Similarly (12/27), or 2/3x(18/27), represents the portion of the new members signed up who would sign up for a third year in a row.

    Likewise (8/27), or 2/3x(12/27), represents the portion of the new members signed up who would sign up for a fourth year in a row.

    I didn't bother including those who would sign up for a fifth year (or even more) in a row, since the number would probably be relatively quite small. Hence the equation is only an approximation.

    So, solving for X+(18/27)X+(12/27)X+(8/27)X = 9,

    we can simplify this to (65/27)X = 9, which means

    X = (9x27)/65 = approx. 3.7.

    2E) Hence the CFC might really need to sign up only 4 new members as a result of a random mail campaign to 500 people in order to break even.

    On a seperate point, I think that discontinuing the Participating Junior Memberships may have been a mistake that will make it harder to reach the goal of 2000 CFC members as of May 1, 2011. In fact, the membership total may even go down compared to May 1 this year if no unusual attempts to increase membership are made.

  9. #29
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin Pacey
    Random mailing might not be so prohibitively expensive, unless there are costs other than stamps, and (already on hand?) paper and envelopes.
    ...
    2E) Hence the CFC might really need to sign up only 4 new members as a result of a random mail campaign to 500 people in order to break even.
    If we accept that the conclusion 2E) of my previous post is anywhere near accurate, another question is, what is the likelihood of a random mailing campaign to 500 citizens gaining one (or more) new CFC member(s)?

    Well, back when the CFC had ~5000 members, the population of Canada may have been (for the sake of argument) 25 million people.

    So let's give ourselves these odds: 1 in 5000 (the ratio of Canadians who belonged to the CFC at its peak) Canadians might join up if asked, assuming they were unaware of the CFC's existence.

    What are the odds of gaining no new members from a 500 single-person household mail-out? That will tell us what the rest of the cases (with 1,2 or....500 members signed up) would add up to in terms of probability without having to use a computer program involving binomial distribution, etc. that would be involved using a complex statistical formula that I've long forgotten for calculations for the odds of every case (0,1,...500 new members signed up).

    The odds of signing up no new members, based on random chance alone (not taking into account the persuasive power of the brochure and other factors), would be simply:

    (4999/5000) to the power of 500.

    I estimate this to be roughly 0.77 (only!), based on fiddling with my calculatator, and elementary exponent formulae.

    That means the odds of gaining 1 or more (up to 500!) members out of a random mail campaign to 500 citizens, based on pure chance alone, could be guessed as about 23%.
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 07-12-2010 at 04:11 PM.

  10. #30
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Ottawa Ontario National Master Former Gov.
    Posts
    10,761
    Blog Entries
    61

    Default

    For anyone who may care , what if the CFC did a random mail campaign to 1000 single-person households?

    Based on the assumptions given in my previous 2 posts, the cost would be ~$600,

    Similarly the CFC would need to gain ~3.7x2 = 7.4 or 8 new members to possibly break even within four years,

    Likewise, the odds of gaining one or more (up to 1000!) CFC members based on random chance alone could be guessed at as about
    1-((4999/5000) to the power of 1000),
    or 1-(((4999/5000) to the power of 500) squared)
    = approx. 1-(.77x.77)
    = approx. 1-.59, which means the odds are about 41%.
    Last edited by Kevin Pacey; 07-13-2010 at 12:50 PM.

Page 3 of 9 FirstFirst 12345 ... LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •