How do we attract new members?

[cwbullet]

A few years ago, we had a very active club with a little over a dozen very active members and nearly five dozen members in each of the two clubs that shared the field in Orangeburg. After NSL, we lost the field, and the club shrank. We have struggled to add members, but we are adding ones and twos slowly. We now have far few members and a smaller number of very active fliers.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to attract new blood to rocketry?

 

[markkoelsch]

A few years ago, we had a very active club with a little over a dozen very active members and nearly five dozen members in each of the two clubs that shared the field in Orangeburg. After NSL, we lost the field, and the club shrank. We have struggled to add members, but we are adding ones and twos slowly. We now have far few members and a smaller number of very active fliers.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to attract new blood to rocketry?

Chuck, this is a serious question that many local clubs, and the national orgs face as well.

My thoughts tend to seeking out STEM events and trying to get kids and parents involved.

I also think the college launch crowd has some promise, but there is difference in having someone come out to fly due to it being a class project versus them becoming long term hobbyists. My experience is that the conversion rate amongst these people is not very high.

I wish I had a good answer, but alas, if I had one I would have enacted it already.

 

[tim cubbedge]

Wish we had that problem at NEFAR. We have grown quite a bit in last 5 years & now many complaints from people in the area as well as incidents that have eroded the trust in club. The president refers to current situation as death by growth.

 

[K'Tesh]

Advertise launches at your local schools. Make a flier for your local science teachers, and ask them to post them in class.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Not be a snarky jerk to new members on forum. I see way too much of that everyone chews out the new guy on the forum just for trying something different like a minimum diameter cert rocket etc. And the sad part is most of these people are real cool in person. It’s like a forum shrieking syndrome.

 

[Gary Byrum]

Advertising. It worked well for RONCO. Hobby Shops ads come to mind. Do a little homework for addresses, mail out some fliers like K'tesh mentioned. Encourage them to post them in store. That's how I found out about ROCC. Which in turn, led me to your club.

 

[dr wogz]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to attract new blood to rocketry?

Attach a screen & game controller to a rocket.. [sorry, couldn't resist!]

Our club is slowly growing. Advertising. A flyer at the local hobby shops (we have a local one that always puts in a good word for us). A show & tell at the local air cadets, scouts, 4H clubs.. Advertise in the local papers, community bulletin boards, libraries.. Consistent launches.. proximity helps. driving an hour or more can turn people off.

Having a good flyer vs. a mediocre one helps.. Some people take offence to the work they've done, despite constructive criticism.

Sometimes the people in charge are the problem. They mean well, but end up rubbing others the wrong way. I know of one club (R/C) that folded a few years ago, because one particular guy got the position of president, then turned 180°and felt he had to make massive changes as he now "owns" the club. He ended up alienating the rest of the club.

 

[Kallahan11]

Attach a screen & game controller to a rocket.. [sorry, couldn't resist!]

Don't tempt me, I've been thing about a PC gaming master rocket for a few years now. 8" rocket with an ITX board, a cheap Nvidia 1050, a 5in industrial screen, and RGB as far as the eye can see.

 

[jadebox]

Advertise the club with listings in your local newspaper's event listings and on web sites listing events in your area. Lots of people review those to find things to do with the kids on the weekend.

Make an event post at Nextdoor.com. Nextdoor is sort of like Facebook, but groups people with neighbors.

Work with your library to schedule a class on building and flying rockets.

Have some RTF rockets or kits on hand at launches to give to people that show up without a rocket. Convert watchers into flyers!

Email your local paper (and TV and radio stations) and ask if they are interested in doing a story about your club.

Make sure your club's web site is working and doesn't look out of date. If it displays a copyright year, make sure it is this year. If it displays dates of the most recent posts, make sure you add posts often enough that the dates aren't from a long time ago.

Get business cards printed with info about your club and give to your members to hand out. Leave some with local stores that sell rockets if there are any.

We are fortunate to have several local club's, so I made a web site called OrlandoRocketry.com. That way, when someone shows interest in rocketry, I can refer them to the site for more info. I have business cards I carry with me that have the website's URL and a QR code for the site on them.

Even if you only have one club in your area, creating a site with an easier to remember domain name (or just redirecting an easier domain name to your club's site) might be a good idea. For example, one of our local club's sites is at r-o-c-k.org. That's hard to say and remember (and type!). So, I often refer people to OrlandoRocketry.com instead.

What ... else? Hmm ...

Oh ... err ... Arr .... Blimey, I almost forgot what day this be

May your compass be true.

-- (Jolly) Roger

 

[dlb]

Advertise,Advertise, Advertise, Online, Local hobby stores, Vendors, Schools.
Did this once before in Las Vegas and increased club by 100% in just a few months, with Flyer sheets.
Maybe reduce flyer cost, yearly club fee paying member, then no standard Flying fees(Freedom launch or SCI power, not included). Not in the club, then flying fees, adds incentive. Rock solid Launch dates ( with in reason), Advertise,Advertise, Advertise.

 

[dr wogz]

We also advertise that kids who come to the launch, can build & fly a rocket for themselves. it's a saucer / dessert plate thingie with a 'C' motor.. $5 and they launch it & walk away with it. (We have the MMTs premade, and a box of markers. So, the kids can decorate the saucer, then we just glue in the MMT, and then load a motor..)

Talk to the local R/C club to see if you can do a demo.. I've done that.
Talk to the local Legion / veteran's office and do a demo there. Many older ex military find the rockets a pretty cool thing! Also with some senior's homes, as once you're retired, what to do with your time?! (and grand-dads can bring their grand kids!)

 

[wyattjohnson35]

A few years ago, we had a very active club with a little over a dozen very active members and nearly five dozen members in each of the two clubs that shared the field in Orangeburg. After NSL, we lost the field, and the club shrank. We have struggled to add members, but we are adding ones and twos slowly. We now have far few members and a smaller number of very active fliers.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to attract new blood to rocketry?

Hey Chuck,

I run a program out of Atlanta that is focused on getting more kids interested in rocketry, we should chat sometime. We run things similar to a college team where the students get their kits subsidized by the company and allow them to work up from mid-power to high-powered, and beyond depending on their age. For a lot of high school students, the key is some kind of competition whether that be TARC or Battle of the Rockets. In college, they have IREC (Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition) and SEDS but these are kind of off-limits to high school students. IMO the two big keys are the cost of entry and the support system. Rocketry is very complex and very expensive sometimes, so a lot of people need some kind of mentor/teacher to help them learn as it can be like drinking from a fire hose. We try and have a lot of things donated / free for organization members so they can be focused on learning rocketry and not affording rocketry. Feel free to PM me if you have questions.

Advertising. It worked well for RONCO. Hobby Shops ads come to mind. Do a little homework for addresses, mail out some fliers like K'tesh mentioned. Encourage them to post them in store. That's how I found out about ROCC. Which in turn, led me to your club.

Recommendation for this - print on a laser-jet at home cuz it's far cheaper per flyer and then use every-door-direct-mail through USPS, about $90 for 500 flyers.

 

[Dave A]

Sometimes air shows will let you put on displays, gets a lot of folks to see your clubs rockets. Any other event that is within 50 miles of the field.

 

[ActingLikeAKid]

I wonder if signage could help. Some big signs saying "ROCKET LAUNCH TODAY - FREE TO THE PUBLIC" could certainly draw some attention, and spectators are one small step (and a hundred bucks or so) away from becoming flyers. Of course, having the general public flock to a launch would also require some really clear signage about launch area rules and probably someone dedicated to making sure people follow them.

 

[K'Tesh]

Southern Oregon Rocketry shares a field with an RC group. Perhaps you could find a local RC field, and advertise there.

 

[Exactimator]

I'm sorry I don't know the details of losing your field and the situation you have now. I assume you found a new field for the club?

It may be worth your time to contact former members and ask why they left. It may just be lost momentum from losing the field. But it also might be there's an issue with the club that's keeping people away? Maybe there's some issue you could fix?

 

[dhbarr]

Don't tempt me, I've been thing about a PC gaming master rocket for a few years now. 8" rocket with an ITX board, a cheap Nvidia 1050, a 5in industrial screen, and RGB as far as the eye can see.

...

...

Iwould contribute to something like this. Maybe I'll launch a pi-hat-cluster?

 

[mrichhcirm]

Thinkin' out of the box:

Donate copies of HMR and other rocketry books to local libraries with inserts advertising the local club. (I'm finding model-aviation books of all kinds to be somewhat scarce at libraries).

Build rockets and donate them to be raffled off at school/youth/charity fundraisers. Include a few motors and supplies and an invitation to a club launch for expert instruction and use of the launch equipment.

Build rockets as art pieces and enter them in local art shows/craft fairs/ comic book and sci-fi cons, etc.

Club adopts a highway and gets to display a sign in return.

In other words, we need to put rockets out in front of a lot of eyeballs (I'm not counting YouTube viewers).

 

[grouch]

Launch sites are a huge issue. It's hard to convince someone to make a 2 hour drive one way to "check out a hobby". We in North Texas are laugh site challenged. DARS has a decent turn out and seems to bring fresh blood with CAP and what not but the metroplex is large and those of us in the southern part have to make a big commitment just to fly.

 

[Chris_H]

This recent article in National Geographic is going to attract some new people, for sure. I am guessing that Balls will see an increase in attendance next year, and more so the following year. I think this will be felt across the board. Not huge, but real.

 

[captbk]

you mean this one? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...hotography-nevada-black-rock-desert-homemade/

 

[neil_w]

I got back into rocketry due to rocketry demos that my local club (Radical Rocketeers) did at the local 4H Fair that I attended for several years with my family. In addition to flying some low powered stuff, they brought along an MDRM and a couple of other MPR and HPR rockets, and it just about blew my mind. After going to a couple of these demos, the lightbulb finally went on that I could be doing this again.

So yeah, advertising and demonstrations wherever possible. Put it in front of enough people and some will be interested enough to attend. I like the idea of having some rockets for kids to fly, and making it known (via ads or whatever) that that will be the case.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

College campuses are open to a lot of free vendors once a club is established or also through contacting the school of business or engineering departments where outsiders are welcome to come and speak in front of students. In engineering lots of students could get their hands on with the hobby to test their theoretical skills. There were electrical engineer students not on the school rocket team which was a mechanical engineering program but oddly they wanted to build small gps/radio beacons for fun. See those students missed out. Nobody from a rocketry altimeter company or whatnot cared to go to a campus and engage with students. Nobody flying high power told those kids hey we want a gps X,Y,Z units large.

One of those college high power rocketry engineering competitions sparked my interest in continuing the hobby. Some of my teammates showed interest in hobby while others didn’t really care. Yesterday the college had an international event where speakers from Germany came and simply talked of their nation through the school of business. But every student was notified in email of the speaking event. The college campuses love events with speakers. It gives the media on campus something to snark about and do photo ops to promote the college more. If you do present at a college you will get some kind of turnout. And if a college isn’t involved in SEDS/IREC/SLI it should consider it. The ones not participating do not know this opprotunity exists. Outside of those programs many others think what we did with rockets was cool. I have some friends considering doing L-1 for fun. They pester me with endless questions. Some aren’t engineer students.

 

[cwbullet]

All great ideas. THX guys.

 

[grouch]

The big issue I see is if people are not self motivated to seek it out on their own, they are not likely to stick around long anyway. This is a strange hobby. More than once I have seen a large rocket hanging from the ceiling in a hobby store with enough dust on it to suggest it’s been there for years. The things always lack positive motor retention so you know they were built a while back. Always makes you wonder who builds a large 4” rocket just to fly maybe once then hang it in some hobby store filled with cheap drones and RC cars?

 

[DM1975]

Swimsuit calendars and biergarten’s

 

[jlabrasca]

Swimsuit calendars and biergarten’s

Not to body-shame anybody (all bodies are beautiful) but I have to admit that I am struggling a bit with the image of a "Men of High Power Rocketry" swimsuit calendar.

I wish I knew the new member conversion rate for walk-ups at our club's lower power launches, but I don't know how we would collect the data. All I can offer is anecdotal. I know that we do pick up members this way (it is how I joined).

It helps that we have club members who are enthusiastic and personable running the launch. Its been going on for a long time, running every month in the same location (during the dry season). It has good word-of-mouth in the larger metropolitan area and attracts respectable crowds (10 or 20 fliers, in addition to the club members who show up).

 

[DM1975]

Not to body-shame anybody (all bodies are beautiful) but I have to admit that I am struggling a bit with the image of a "Men of High Power Rocketry" swimsuit calendar.

I think it’d sell if you put me on the cover. Or at least they would be flying off the shelves. Maybe to the trash can but flying off the shelves none the less lol.

 

[dr wogz]

Not to body-shame anybody (all bodies are beautiful) but I have to admit that I am struggling a bit with the image of a "Men of High Power Rocketry" swimsuit calendar.

something like could be weaponized.. :O

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Don't forget the free publicity you can get form launchin an M in the local mall parking lot...


something like could be weaponized.. :O

You think a CIA blacksite treats people badly? Those CIA torture spooks are angels compared to model rocketeers who lose every FAA waiver forever. There’s actually worse from TRF members once you get a hobby banned. You’d see the wrath of Crazy Jim. And others who can’t live without APCP. Forget the federal consequences and FBI joint FAA taskforce investigations. All these very angry hobbyists would torture you rather slowly and extremely painfully for launching an M in a parking lot without a waiver. Heard Tripoli and NAR even has shark tanks for such stupidity.