I haven't seen anyone provide a description of Trip's speech and there were a few interesting points that he included that have been topics of discussion on various TRF threads so here is a summary...
Membership: During the big membership push last year we reached a high of 5150 but after the drive ended things began to slide a little and have drifted down to a current level of slightly less than 5000 members despite the $5 bonus offered to recruit new mwmbers.
Finances: We currently are very healthy financially with approx. $300K in unrestricted funds. This means that we can afford to provide increased services.
Our Magazine is excellent: Advertising revenue provides $6K per issue which is 25% of cost. But, more articles are needed. (More on this later)
Outreach programs are doing very well: Our participation in programs like TARC, 4-H and NASA SLI are reaching young people and are the epitome of paying it forward.
Priorities: Trip's priorities are to make safety the priority or our entire organization. Unsafe flights still happen and they shouldn't. Major accidents and injuries are rare but in this world of litigation, we are, honestly only one major accident away from being regulated out of a fun hobby. Our hobby must continue to grow, both in membership and in the number of sections/clubs. Expanding our high-power programs and launches if also a priority as is providing better national support to our local sections.
Concerns: 1) Again, unsafe rockets that should not get flown, still get flown. We're better than that and we need to be more careful. 2) We are not attracting enough young people to our membership. Junior membership used to be over 1000 but is now only 600. As a result, we do not have enough persons age 25-40 who can move into leadership as older members "retire." 3) New member retention is not high enough. Personal contact with these new members is needed. 4) Continued development is encroaching on lands previously available to fly on and landowner fears of "safety" or litigation continues to reduce access to launch sites. 5) More NAR volunteers (including Trustees) are needed to improve services and programs both locally and nationally. Trip pointed out that currently we have the MONEY to provide additional services but what we lack is the PEOPLE to have good ideas and to administrate these new services.
Membership Survey: 843 members took the 2011 online survey (nearly all adults) this also provided 65 pages of text comments in addition to the answers to the 30 survey questions. Overall, no program was "broken" but all left room for improvement. Three particular areas stood out as in need of improvement: Increased support to local sections, a complete redo of the NAR website, and enhance the "how to" article content in Sport Rocketry. The number one impediment to members' enjoyment of the hobby is access to launch sites. Lots of divergent (that is no agreement) opinions on the need for changes in competition or HPR programs. There is, however, significant agreement and support for education programs.
That gets me about halfway through Trip's speech but now I need to go to work...
Membership: During the big membership push last year we reached a high of 5150 but after the drive ended things began to slide a little and have drifted down to a current level of slightly less than 5000 members despite the $5 bonus offered to recruit new mwmbers.
Finances: We currently are very healthy financially with approx. $300K in unrestricted funds. This means that we can afford to provide increased services.
Our Magazine is excellent: Advertising revenue provides $6K per issue which is 25% of cost. But, more articles are needed. (More on this later)
Outreach programs are doing very well: Our participation in programs like TARC, 4-H and NASA SLI are reaching young people and are the epitome of paying it forward.
Priorities: Trip's priorities are to make safety the priority or our entire organization. Unsafe flights still happen and they shouldn't. Major accidents and injuries are rare but in this world of litigation, we are, honestly only one major accident away from being regulated out of a fun hobby. Our hobby must continue to grow, both in membership and in the number of sections/clubs. Expanding our high-power programs and launches if also a priority as is providing better national support to our local sections.
Concerns: 1) Again, unsafe rockets that should not get flown, still get flown. We're better than that and we need to be more careful. 2) We are not attracting enough young people to our membership. Junior membership used to be over 1000 but is now only 600. As a result, we do not have enough persons age 25-40 who can move into leadership as older members "retire." 3) New member retention is not high enough. Personal contact with these new members is needed. 4) Continued development is encroaching on lands previously available to fly on and landowner fears of "safety" or litigation continues to reduce access to launch sites. 5) More NAR volunteers (including Trustees) are needed to improve services and programs both locally and nationally. Trip pointed out that currently we have the MONEY to provide additional services but what we lack is the PEOPLE to have good ideas and to administrate these new services.
Membership Survey: 843 members took the 2011 online survey (nearly all adults) this also provided 65 pages of text comments in addition to the answers to the 30 survey questions. Overall, no program was "broken" but all left room for improvement. Three particular areas stood out as in need of improvement: Increased support to local sections, a complete redo of the NAR website, and enhance the "how to" article content in Sport Rocketry. The number one impediment to members' enjoyment of the hobby is access to launch sites. Lots of divergent (that is no agreement) opinions on the need for changes in competition or HPR programs. There is, however, significant agreement and support for education programs.
That gets me about halfway through Trip's speech but now I need to go to work...