<VV> 100% CORSA Membership

Bruce Schug bwschug at charter.net
Wed Mar 2 17:38:13 EST 2005


A couple of weeks ago, when everybody was complaining about everything 
they didn't like about CORSA and the Communique, there were some 
comments about chapters getting all of their members to join CORSA - 
obtaining 100% CORSA membership.

Many of you have heard this story before. If you haven't this may 
interest you. Several years ago, our chapter, CORSA South Carolina, 
decided what we would do to try to get all of our members to join 
CORSA. Our board met and discussed this issue at length, several times. 
We gave the topic much thought. This is what we came up with.

We felt strongly in supporting CORSA and getting our members to join 
CORSA. At the same time, we had some members who were not CORSA 
members. We polled them and found that some of them just were not going 
to join CORSA. Some weren't joiners, some had belonged and just weren't 
involved enough with Corvairs to re-join. If we required CORSA 
membership, we would lose them.

Further, we were concerned with requiring new members to join CORSA 
before knowing how much they liked Corvairing. We've had lots of 
members join for, perhaps, 1-3 years, then lose interest and drop out. 
We were concerned about meeting a potential new member and telling them 
they could join our club for $15 a year and take part in all of our fun 
events and meetings, and oh, by the way, you also have to join CORSA 
for $35.

The solution we came up with was, first, to grandfather through current 
members who did not belong to CORSA, with them paying a surcharge of 
$10, because they are not CORSA members, which we sent to CORSA. 
Interestingly, none of them seemed opposed to paying the extra $10. 
Originally I think we had five of these non-CORSA members. Over the 
years, all but one has dropped out of the club. I don't think the $10 
had anything to do with their decision, they just lost interest in 
Corvairs, and dropped out.

Current members must maintain their CORSA membership. This isn't easy 
to police, but we do the best we can. We have had a few let their CORSA 
membership lapse. When we found out about it, usually when the Chapter 
Report was filed, we'd just remind them and they've always paid up.

New members are required to join CORSA within a year of joining our 
club. Actually, the next time after they've been in our club a year 
that dues are due. So if they joined our club in June of 2000, they 
would have to pay our dues again in January 2001 as we all pay our dues 
at the first of the year. By the time they paid for January 2002, they 
must be CORSA members. This gives them some time to see what Corvairing 
is all about.

This policy has been successful for us. We've sent CORSA some 
ten-dollar bills for our non-CORSA members and have found a reasonable 
way to deal with mandatory CORSA membership, without driving off new 
people who weren't committed enough to spend $50 for CORSA and CORSA SC 
membership. We have had some members say they didn't like being told 
that they had to join CORSA - they might do it on their own, they just 
didn't like being forced to do something. I don't know any way around 
this, there are just some things in life we HAVE to do! But all-in-all 
we feel ours is a reasonable policy.

An alternative to our policy would be to offer the $10 surcharge to 
members who didn't want to join CORSA after a year. That way CORSA 
would still get the financial support, we'd keep the member, and the 
member wouldn't have to join CORSA if they didn't want to.

Bruce

Bruce W. Schug
CORSA South Carolina
Greenville, SC
bwschug at charter.net

CORSA member since 1981

'67 Monza. "67AC140"


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