<VV> RE: 100% CORSA Membership

[Keith Hammett]

Maybe Corsa should consider a reduced rate for chapters that have members
that are not Corsa Members and don't want to be.  The reduced rate could
make them Corsa members, but they would not receive the Communique.  The
club could then require an extra amount that would equal the reduced rate
and then be able to obtain the 100% membership.

Just a thought.

Keith Hammett
Non local club member (not one close enough) :(

Member CORSA, Corvanatics

-----Original Message-----

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"