<VV> CORSA Future.

[james rice]

All:  Along with others, I agree Barry has some great observations.  As a
continuation of the discussion, I offer these additional thoughts.

First off, the e-Communique vs the p-Communique is nothing more than the tip
of the spear that is poking us now.  Methinks the current "e-Communique"
should better be called "ol-Communique" (ol for on-line) since it is not
delivered to your in-basket.  May be some day, but probably not next month.

But this not actually the issue that will make or break CORSA.

The big issue which will make or break CORSA is income vs expense.  Barry
says this, and we all ultimately know it.  This has been a topic in CORSA
for at least a decade.  It came up each year I was on the CORSA/CPF BoD's
back in '99 thru '01.  Income vs expense is really an issue about those
providing, at a cost customers are willing to pay, goods and services.  How
do we get and keep customers?  The cost of the goods and services has to be
what customers wants, including by not limited to, quality and timeliness of
the goods and services.

As Barry pointed out, while stated in different ways, this is a common topic
within lots of organization.  Following are some examples.  There was a
article in our paper this week about the local VFW hall's declining
membership and their need/efforts to recruit new Vets.  Our church is also
dealing/struggling with the issue, which manifest itself in different ways.
Similarly, about 6 weeks ago the Peoria paper had an article about very
large, local church (it may be a mega-church, but I don't know what the
definition of a mega church is) were only 20% of the attendees (aka: the
congregation) were members and only half of the volunteer staff were
members.  But they continue to grow in attendance and their budget is 6.3
million. I don't know if the ratio of members to the attendees/congregation
is of concern to for them, but it is with our church, where only members
(ie: those who agree with and support the purposes of the church by
identifying with it via membership, with its duties and responsibilities)
can vote on decisions, serve and provide leadership.  While different from a
car club in lots of ways, a church at some level is a provider of goods and
services to a set of customers.

This is not just a issue volunteer organizations have.  Last year, the month
before I retired from Caterpillar, they announced some new mandatory on-line
training for supervisors.  Topic: "generational employee engagement".  There
was three or four generational specific groups, each with a different
on-line class.  I left before I could take any of them.  "Generation change"
are such wonderful words.  Our internal and external customers have changed.
Wonderful.

How do we deal with it?

CORSA, as a provider of goods and services, must figure out what the
generational change means to a car club.  What are the sociological and
culture make-up of it's current and potential future customers?  How do we
get and keep customers?  If you don't know who your customers are, you
cannot get them to consistently choose to use your goods and services at the
whatever the price may be.  Failure to do so results in painfully going out
of business.

It has been my experience that every person who has been on the CORSA/CPF
BoDs wants to make the correct decisions so CORSA & CPF thrive.  Same for
each Committee Chair and their helpers.    They all want to do something
positive.  They spend lots of time and money* in service to you, get
criticized, and get little praise or thank you for their efforts.  Seems to
me most BoD members start as chapter leadership and want to take on
additional responsibilities.  This is good.  We hope we take the best we can
get.  But is this good enough?  Is there, or has there ever been, a business
or marketing professional among them.  Don't know of any, myself included.
Is there available to CORSA anyone who can tell us how to shape and present
our goods and services for the X or Y Generation, and whatever alphabet
named generation is following in their steps?

I simply do not know.  I hope asking the question will be useful.

Historically Yours,
			James Rice

* SOAP BOX:  How many of you have thought about the expense of being on the
CORSA/BoDs?  In three years, my cost was about $5K just to attend the
conventions.  Maybe we are the truly crazies ones.  Some of you need to go
back in the Communiques and determine how many directors don't run for a 2nd
terms.  Or complete their 1st term.  There is a reason.  Learn to say thank
you to the BoD and Committee Chairs, 'cause without them, CORSA/CPF would
cease to exist over night.

***************************************************

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 09:51:51 -0500
From: "Barry Johnson" <barry.johnson at activant.com>
Subject: <VV> Long: CORSA changes, e-Communique and (mostly other)
	thoughts.
To: "Virtual Vairs" <virtualvairs at corvair.org>

James Rice said:  "I do not envy anyone on the CORSA/CPF BoD's right now.
Ugly times and difficult decisions."

As others have probably noted, this malaise is not restricted only to CORSA.
I've been actively (national or regional levels) involved in three other
hobbies, and each one is facing the same problem.  I have good friends
involved in several other organizations -- and each organization is feeling
the same pain.

The recurring theme:  groups that ballooned in size during the seventies and
eighties are struggling with significant decreases in membership and cash
flow during the nineties and 'ought's'.  The influx of new (mostly younger)
members is far below the rate required to replace the long-term (mostly
older) members that will leave in the foreseeable future.

I dislike generalities, but I think this much is true:  folks generally of
my age (I'm 50) or younger are being pulled many, many ways.  They appear to
have more options for their time, and parse that time in finer slices by
being less involved with more groups; often preferring to pay a little more
money in exchange for having less responsibility.  (That's not implying at
all that they aren't responsible, but rather that they feel they already
have all the responsibility they can handle at the moment).  They appear to
be working longer hours, have a longer commute, and have more family time
pressures with their kids.

In one particularly infamous spring, my wife and I had three kids in each of
Scouting, baseball, tai-kwon-do, gymnastics (truth be told, only two were in
gymnastics).  We both work full time -- counting our commute times, I was
putting in about 70 hours a week, and she was putting in about 55.  We were
leaders in Scouting, volunteered to help with baseball and church, and
coached one of the kid's soccer team in the fall.  Did I have time for my
Corvair, resting in the garage?  Not!  Was our situation all that unusual?
Not really.  Would I have considered CORSA membership?  Not on your life --
then.

It's only now, as the kids have moved on, that I have some spare time.

Finally, one notes that this particular hobby is inevitably destined to
shrink.  How many new Corvairs are being minted, versus how many are being
scrapped?  The absolute count of Corvair owners is guaranteed to decrease
over time.  Unless we can convince non-Corvair owners to join CORSA, we have
a declining market.

We can work to increase our share of that market (increase the percentage of
CORSA members out of the total number of Corvair owners), but the market
itself is shrinking.  As operating costs increase and the market decreases,
there are only two long-term options available for survival:  increase
prices or cut services.  Short-term options may be open (increasing market
share by convincing non-members that they're better off if they pay an
annual membership fee), but long term those are the only choices.

There are two other long-term options:  one is to evolve into something
different (to be able to reach a wider market), and the other is to
gracefully die.  Groups like AACE can grow (relatively) by aggregation,
absorbing membership from groups like CORSA as they lose sustainability.

I'm not suggesting that 'evolve or die' are the choices facing the BoD now;
it may not be too late to put those choices off through short-term actions.

But I am convinced that a group will *not* be able to increase their share
of a shrinking market by becoming more hard-nosed and inflexible.  If the
choice is "pay full price or you can't have anything", folks of my
generation will often walk away -- they have plenty of other things to do.
Our goal ought to be "get what money and time we can out of these folks",
which means more flexible policies.

Delivering the Communique two ways (electronically and on paper) is a good
example of a "more flexible policy".  The Internet version meets the needs
of some people at essentially no additional cost to the organization, while
the paper version remains unchanged for the rest.

For another example, consider the National Convention.  My understanding is
that the convention is open only to CORSA members -- if a non-member
attempted to register, they'd be turned away.  Why not let 'em in -- but
charge them more?  Let them pay $50 for non-member registration instead of
$30.  You could think of the surcharge as a six-month CORSA membership
without incurring the major costs of true membership (like mailing the
Communiqu?).

A third example for establishing a revenue stream from non-members: if full
CORSA membership isn't worth $38 to some people, would a standalone
subscription to the Communique be worth $24?  $28?  $30?  To some, it might,
and as long as that stand-alone subscription is more than the marginal cost
of printing one more copy, then we're ahead.  Strictly speaking, a
standalone subscription ought to "pay for itself" and a bit more, so that if
everyone switched from CORSA membership to just Communiqu? subscriptions,
the magazine could survive on its own.  The other benefits provided by CORSA
ought to represent the value of the difference between the magazine
subscription price and full membership.

I have no idea if these types of topics are discussed at the BoD meetings --
I suspect (and certainly hope) that they are.

But this man's opinion is that there is no easy short-term fix, that the
demographics of our society and the US economic model are changing, and that
those changes will inevitably force CORSA to change somewhat as well.

baj
----------------
Barry Johnson
Lake in the Hills, IL
Member CORSA, CCE
'64 Monza Convertible for sale
'65 Monza 140PG