<CORSA Chapters> Attendance Incentives (was: Corvair at meetings)

[vairtec at optonline.net]

Here in NJ, we've tried a number of things over the years.  Currently (and for the past 15 years or so) we conduct two parallel attendance rewards, a "participation" award (you get a point for showing up) and a "Corvair Driver" award (you get a point for arriving in a Corvair).  There are no other points measuring level of activity or anything like that.  Two year-end awards based on these points, one for participation and one for driving a Corvair, are awarded.

I don't think that it materially affects attendance but it does seem to have a small effect upon bringing one's Corvair to the meetings and events.

Some years back, we tried an idea which I really liked but which also did not appear to have any real effect on attendance.  We stole it from another club, I no longer remember which one.  It was called the "Chip Dip," and at each meeting we had a bucket containing poker chips, each bearing the name of a member.  If the member whose chip was pulled was present, that member won $5.  If the member whose chip was pulled was not present, the prize rose to $10 for the next meeting, and so on.  I think it once grew to 50 bucks or so once during the few years that we used it.  We published the names of the winners, and more importantly, the "losers," in the newsletter each month, i.e.,  "Bob Marlow didn't win $20 last month because he wasn't at the meeting where his name was pulled in the chip dip."

In some 30+ years in my local club, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing that really boosts attendance is the nature of the event itself.  We get excellent Corvair turnout for cruise nights and tech sessions, not so good for ordinary meetings.  We get good member turnout for regular meetings when we have an appealing program, not so good for less intriguing programs.  (We had one of our best meetings ever, in terms of attendance, on the night we snagged the Director of the State Division of Motors Vehicles as a guest speaker.)

--Bob Marlow (who never did win the Chip Dip even though I never missed a meeting)