Question about NAR membership.

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NAR was pretty much forced into requiring all members to buy the insurance in order for the insurance to remain practical. I have to laugh at the notion that the old $26 optional insurance (under SFA) would simply be whatever the cost if inflation has been since that timeframe. Apples and Pine cones.

The $26 was in conjunction with a Model airplane organization called “SFA”, or Sport Flyers of America. It was a splinter group of ex-AMA members, and a handful of ex-AMA officials, who created an organization in the early to mid-1990’s for just Sport flying model airplaners. For those who did NOT want to support an organization that promoted their own hobby, did not say have to spend any money working on issues with the FAA, or working with the FCC (while AMA was spending their member’s dues on things like keeping model airplanes out of the grubby hands of FAA regulators, and to keep model airplane R/C frequencies from disappearing..... tried to watch any over-the air television on an old analog TV lately???).

SFA was mainly created for the sake of insurance really. Oh, in their P.R., it seemed like they did more, but realistically their purpose to exist was model airplane insurance at a cheaper price than joining AMA. imagine a splinter group from the NAR that only existed for insurance and never dealt with issues like the BATF, FAA, NFPA, Homeland Security, and so forth, because the NAR (and Tripoli) are stuck having to expend their resources to fight those battles while the splinter group “just wanted rocket insurance” and didn’t spend anything on that but perhaps lip service (If you think we will never ever have to deal with BATF again in any other matters, I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a bunch of Enertek kits to sell you....).

Now, where is the NAR connection? Well, we have to go back thru the time machine many years prior, to some time in the mid 1970’s or so. The NAR started getting its insurance thru AMA. Pretty much piggybacking rocket insurance thru AMA’s insurance program. So, THIS made it practical for insurance to be an option. The part of the insurance that NAR members had to pay was a very small fraction of what AMA membership cost.

Then time moves on, and so did some of the more NAR-friendly members of the AMA board. Indeed, former NAR board member (and former AMA board member) John Worth was one of those who formed SFA. Anyway, the AMA kept increasing how much NAR members would have to pay to get insurance, not just inflation but a greater and greater percentage of what AMA dues were.

Finally, the AMA stopped giving a “deal” at all, and required NAR members to pay to be full AMA members to get any rocket insurance. IIRC, the cost of an NAR membership, plus the cost of an AMA membership.... was close to or perhaps more than the cost of an NAR membership TODAY. But I'm talking about 15 years or so back in time here, and that does not include inflation (I do not recall what year NAR left AMA for SFA).

BUT, the deal was even more lopsided because the value of the insurance (payout for any claims) for rockets was a fraction of the payout for model airplane claims. I cannot recall the numbers, but it was something like model airplanes, 2 million dollars, model rockets 200,000 dollars (10% of the model airplane coverage).

Sort of like Lando Calrissian in “Empire Strikes Back”, the NAR’s deal with AMA was getting worse all the time......

Oh, and I left out the fact that AMA rocket insurance was only for model rockets (and LMR’s). Not HPR IIRC.

So now, we rejoin the SFA story, when Lando, I mean the NAR, escaped from Vader’s, I mean AMA’s, worse and worse deals.

SFA offered rocket insurance to the NAR at a better deal than AMA, and it is on an equal footing with their model airplane coverage, not 10% coverage like AMA’s was. One little oddity was SFA required “clubs” to have at least three people to have SFA insurance in order for a club to buy club insurance for an extra fee (I do not recall the club insurance fee but it was pretty reasonable, about the cost of one SFA membership).

So, the SFA deal was a darned good one for the NAR for as long as SFA lasted, which was a few years starting in the mid 1990’s. Then the SFA went away and the NAR had to find alternative means of insurance.

The only practical way for the NAR to do it was to require all members to have insurance. The insurance costs were too high to leave it as an option, since the insurance company was going to charge the NAR the same lump sum for coverage whether 4 thousand, 5 thousand, 1 thousand, or 1 hundred NAR members bought insurance.

So, there is no such thing as to make insurance optional again where those who choose not to buy insurance can do that, and those who DO buy it can pay for a full NAR membership at “just” $65 a year. Because the NAR would go broke at the current dues rate, as the NAR has to pay the insurance company that same lump sum, regardless how many members might want it. So if say half the NAR members did not buy insurance the other half would have to pay a lot more than $65 to get membership WITH insurance.

The one break given in this regard is for the Junior and Leader memberships, in order to try to make it more practical for JR and LR members to be able to afford being an NAR member.

Take note that all the above is from memory and I may have gotten some details incorrect, but the above is the gist of it.

OK, after writing the above I looked up SFA and oddly enough only found a link to an announcement by Mark Bundick when SFA went away.

https://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/410/92/

I had forgotten that the insurance was always calendar year, Jan 1st thru Dec 31st, regardless of NAR membership expiration date (because that is how AMA did it and how SFA did it).

Geoge Gassaway
 
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My comments on fighting for survival apply equally to a common problem that thousands of small non-profit hobby organizations without endowments have: raising revenues. Every day their leaders have to work hard to maintain membership and try to recruit new members to grow revenues at least to match the inflation rate to maintain member services. This is what I meant when I said that hobby organizations are continually fighting for survival.

Ok, that makes good sense to me.

A couple of other things to keep in mind re: NAR membership.

(a) Craft hobbies are in decline. People are spending more time doing electronic things than working with their hands. I see the impact of this every time I help out with a building session; the relative level of craft skills demonstrated by kids these days simply isn't what it was say 10 years ago.

(b) People who are just starting out in a hobby don't usually join the supporting organization right away. They need to build up some further interest and say "this is an activity I want to devote a significant amount of time towards", then they'll start looking for a supporting organization, either local or national. When fully 90+% of people who buy a model rocket starter set fly the engine in that set and then move on, we shouldn't expect the NAR to be a huge organization, even though literally millions of people fly rockets annually.

Again, my $0.02; YMMV.
 
Thank you.

You're certainly welcome.

I did the work because I thought the organization was (and remains) a good one, I thought the work was important and could do some good in a small part of the world, and because I thought I could contribute. I tell people it doesn't matter at what level you assist the NAR, helping out at your local launch is just as needed as running an NAR committee or serving on the NAR Board. All of it contributes to making the NAR better and sport rocketry stronger.
 
but in order to uncover those gems, you will have to sift through a whole lot sand. Just because you managed to get 25 kids to come to a build and fly session, don't think that you have added 25 new members to the hobby. They may have been very interested at the time, but the vast majority will move on to something else soon afterward; you will only get a very small number (if you get any at all) for who the hobby "sticks." You can't create model rocketry enthusiasts, you can only do your best to try to find them.

Bunny's Rule of 10's (learned after a 1,000+ rocket building session at the Chicago Hobby Show)

1,000 people come out and build a free rocket.

100 of them might come out to the launch for the free engine.

10 might become members of your club, if you're lucky and they had the extra $3 burning a hole in their pocket.

We're not the only hobby with this kind of statistical performance, BTW.
 
(b) People who are just starting out in a hobby don't usually join the supporting organization right away. They need to build up some further interest and say "this is an activity I want to devote a significant amount of time towards", then they'll start looking for a supporting organization, either local or national. When fully 90+% of people who buy a model rocket starter set fly the engine in that set and then move on, we shouldn't expect the NAR to be a huge organization, even though literally millions of people fly rockets annually.

Again, my $0.02; YMMV.

I was 12 or 13 when I joined the NAR many many years ago. I did it for the magazine, which at the time wasn't really even a magazine. The only other source of information on the hobby was the stuff Estes had. I had no contact with other flyers until I joined a NAR section and never got much out of that because the other members were much older than I was. Things are much different now. If you know how to use Google, and I doubt that there's any kid who doesn't, you can get all the information you want. I'm a member now because I understand the value of the membership and would still be a member if the insurance or magazine didn't exist (I'm a TRA member too and you don't get a magazine with membership) but the magazine is great and I still like having a piece of paper in my hands. I wonder if I would have joined as quickly today. Have we gotten so totally electronic that offering a one year starter membership that only got you a magazine subscription wouldn't increase membership?
 
Bunny's Rule of 10's (learned after a 1,000+ rocket building session at the Chicago Hobby Show)

1,000 people come out and build a free rocket.

100 of them might come out to the launch for the free engine.

10 might become members of your club, if you're lucky and they had the extra $3 burning a hole in their pocket.

We're not the only hobby with this kind of statistical performance, BTW.

My figures are about the same. After staffing a local boys' camp for ten years and offering a rocketry class to an average of fifty every year where the boys build, learn a little bit about rocket safety and theory, and fly their own rocket at no cost to them I can count on one hand the number of boys who remained in the hobby from the beginning that I am aware of.

Out of about an exposure of four hundred kids (some overlap from year to year) about one percent stuck with it. Some of these boys may be back in the form of BAR's due to either the wonderful experience they had with me :rolleyes: or a mid life crisis situation sometime in the future. Many of us have done that.

Looking at membership for TRA and NAR we can easily see that this hobby isn't for everyone. The most we can do is expose as many folks to it as we can, offer them assistance in any way we can, and let them determine if they have "the call."
 
I, for one, now that the legal battle for HPR is over would like to see a renewed and active emphasis towards the NARTREK programs - where those skills and abilitiies are encouraged and rewarded.

I haven't seen a good, eye-watering article on that in a while.
 
10 might become members of your club, if you're lucky and they had the extra $3 burning a hole in their pocket.

Out of about an exposure of four hundred kids (some overlap from year to year) about one percent stuck with it.
Yup; as I said, you have to sift through a lot of sand to find that one percent.

Looking at membership for TRA and NAR we can easily see that this hobby isn't for everyone. The most we can do is expose as many folks to it as we can, offer them assistance in any way we can, and let them determine if they have "the call."
One of my points was that individuals and clubs shouldn't become discouraged when all of their outreach and mentoring efforts net very few new members. You cannot "create" a rocketeer, any more than you can "create" a mathematician. All that you can do is find them. None of us can change that, no matter how much outreach we do. My own story illustrates my other point: as often as not, they will find you. A kid or young adult who has an itch in his or her brain to fly rockets will be looking for ways to do it. That search will often lead them to model rocketry, and from there to NAR. The kids, young adults and grown-ups who will become multi-year members of NAR are those who have that itch, and quite often, they are already looking for some kind of organization like ours.

Outreach activities are still helpful for two reasons. Far and away the most significant thing that it does is educate kids and parents about what model rocketry is, what it is not, and how it is done in a safe, responsible way. Even if this never yields a single new NAR or club member, it helps to show the general public what we are all about by putting them in the role of a model rocketeer, even if it is just for one day. That alone does much to improve the image of our hobby. The other good thing that outreach does is to advertise the presence of the club and the national organization to those people who really want to fly rockets. It provides a beacon that can guide them to us.

MarkII
 
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Bunny's Rule of 10's (learned after a 1,000+ rocket building session at the Chicago Hobby Show)

1,000 people come out and build a free rocket.

100 of them might come out to the launch for the free engine.

10 might become members of your club, if you're lucky and they had the extra $3 burning a hole in their pocket.

We're not the only hobby with this kind of statistical performance, BTW.


The only flaw with the program laid out the the gap between the building and the flying of the rocket. Ideally the only delay should be where they take their new rocket outside and fly it right then bypassing the 90% loss of potential newbies.


Of course, when are things ever ideal:impatient:
 
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