Last year over memorial day weekend, I attended the Washington Aerospace Club's big "Fire in the Sky" launch, and I decided to join. I was very excited to belong to a rocket club, as for me rocketry tends to be a very solitary hobby. I am usually the only one out on the field when I fly. So this was a very big deal for me. Finally get to fly with other guys, talk about rocketry with others, etc.
Almost 8 months goes by and I realize I haven't heard a peep from my club, and nearly make a drive out to the field for a group launch that I wasn't notified had been rescheduled. So I find the contact list on the website and send an email. Come to find out, the guy in charge of membership didn't add me to the distribution list because "He hates getting spam so tries to limit the amount of spam members get". Then he asks me if I have attended any meetings yet. I say "How the heck can I attend a meeting when I have no idea where or when it is because I never got the email?" I say, "You know, considering you guys completely dropped the ball and didn't provide me with membership services for 8 months, I think the least you could do is take care of my fees for the next year" Then he comes back with "Oh no, we couldn't possibly do that. We have stuff to pay for with your dues".
Am I just being unreasonable here or do I have a legitimate beef? Would you guys expect your local club to comp your fees if you were in that situation or am I just being overly sensitive?
Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens. A club needs to be VERY CAREFUL whom they elect to certain positions and what sort of job their doing. It can't all be just "elect or appoint them and forget about it". The folks in leadership positions of the club can make or break a club, that's for sure.
I've seen it firsthand. We've had a club launching off our farm here for a number of years. The club fell under the leadership of a "president" who was all show and no go, who in about 3-4 years of launches only attended ONE launch, and then only so I could introduce him to my Dad's cousins who own the adjoining farm (whom we have as little to do with as possible-- long story) so he could get permission to "recover" rockets over the fence, and thus add their acreage to ours in an attempt to get HPR setback requirements met for HPR launches out here. After we returned to the range head that afternoon, a flight of a Scissor Wing Transport glided in somewhat fast and steep behind the cars about 30-40 yards away. He flipped out and demanded all launch rods be pointed straight up at all times, no tilting of the rod by ANY amount allowed (despite the 30 degree limitation in the MRSC being observed). This, and his cussing fit when people ignored him and tilted the rods anyway after he repeatedly went to the pads and pointed them straight up, and his subsequent cussing fit on the club's yahoo groups webpage, ignited a firestorm that would ultimately cause the club to implode, coupled with another incident about a year or so later, where a "has been" former club officer from an earlier era decided to take potshots at the new leadership from the peanut gallery (the club had been on life support a few times in its existence, dwindled down to nearly nothing with just one or two members keeping it alive, and built back-- this guy had been club president in one of these earlier eras, but interestingly had NOT been one of the core group that had kept the club alive during the "life support" periods, and the guy has NEVER attended a launch out here to my knowledge, yet he's going to tell the ones doing the work everything they're trying to do is wrong. He ultimately got run out of the club, and subsequently made trouble in another Houston area club and was run out of that one too.) The new leadership got SO disgusted with the situation that they basically quit, and things reverted to the previous president who had since been appointed "business manager" of the club, and who ran things like a "little tin god" and basically did EVERYTHING BUT run the club business. When the former NAR Advisor to the club (who HAD kept it alive on life support before out of his own pocket, basically when it was a "one man club" and brought it back from the edge of extinction TWICE) pointed out that he noticed that the club charter had not been renewed in February when it was due (by now it was June or July) and the club had been flying for several months WITHOUT NAR INSURANCE... When he asked about this situation, he was verbally attacked by the "business manager" and got disgusted and quit the club entirely (he'd stepped down from his Advisor role for awhile due to "real life" concerns demanding his time). As launch site owner, I started making inquiries into the insurance situation, and after repeated "the check is in the mail" empty assurances, I suspended all further launches until I physically received the NAR insurance statement showing it to be in full force and effect. So, after a hiatus of a couple or three months, I FINALLY received the insurance statement via email, and gave a "go" for resumption of monthly launches. The "flying" membership were eager to resume regular launches, yet with the loss of the NAR advisor and Vice President (to the peanut gallery attack incident earlier) there was basically NOBODY left who actually would set up the range, arrange the launches, etc. The "business administrator" wouldn't bother himself to schedule launches, and with nobody willing to step forward and do range duties of setup and teardown and stuff, months passed with basically no launches. As this situation stretched on into the following year, most of the flying membership simply quit or drifted away. Once the active flyers were gone, the club was basically a debating society, with nothing left but the non-active "business administrator", the "has been", and his sycophants. The club imploded and wasn't renewed.
The following winter, the former NAR Advisor started conversations with me about forming a new club, which I enthusiastically endorsed. He was torn over trying to revive the old Challenger 498 club, which had gone through at least two periods of "life support" before where the club had imploded, one due to the Compaq computer factory shutting down many years before (a large number of the members (including the peanut gallery attacker) were former Compaq employees), and a second time after a rich guy joined the club, started ingratiating himself to the membership with a lot of "freebies", which he then assumed entitled him to run the club as he saw fit, and when he was rebuffed, started threatening everyone with lawsuits over everything and anything, running off 99% of the membership and killing the club again-- back down to a one-man show, from which the Advisor had rebuilt it AGAIN. I thought about it and suggested that basically it'd probably be best to simply start from scratch-- that way you jettison all the baggage from "former iterations" of the club-- cut off the "peanut gallery" troublemakers at the knees when they come in and start spouting "how THEY ran the club 20 years ago" by virtue of the simple fact the club hadn't existed 20 years ago... The new club, "Old Rocketeers" started and got off to a good start, but has faltered somewhat... the Advisor has had life issues crop up again that has taken most of his time for the last year, and nobody else seems willing to step forward and run things. Which brings me to another point--
A club basically relies on a core group of active members who actually "do the work", to do the paperwork to keep the club charter active, to schedule and conduct launches and inform the membership, to do outreach programs or assistance programs for things like TARC, to do the physical work of setup and teardown of the range and conduct launches, etc. The wider and more talented that group, the better the club functions. When it's down to one or two guys, the club is definitely at risk for life issues causing that person or persons to be unable to continue doing all the work, and the club can become inactive. So, it's a balancing act-- you can't just put "anybody" in certain positions, because you get the same sort of "ineffective" leadership that you and I mentioned, and the club suffers because of it. At the same time, you need as many people as possible involved in the club operations, to ensure that "life issues" cropping up and causing one of the club leaders to have to "drop out" for awhile, doesn't deal a severe blow to operations.
About the only thing I can see is, "be involved" to the extent you can be. I'm not always around or I'd do more with conducting launches... I used to do a lot of photography of club launches and do monthly launch reports, which I felt I could contribute to fairly effectively, and I helped with setup and teardown at the launches I was able to attend. Others might be in a better position to help with club communications, business administration, etc. Find an area where you can contribute, and pitch in to help as much as you can. "Many hands make light work". It not only helps the club, it helps the membership via better services, which drums up and maintains interest in the club.
Good luck! OL JR
