Peter (and others) I have been following this data for a few years now,
using the published GFA data. For one club in particular, but have looked at
a number of other clubs in other states too (though not Qld).
To answer your query about turnover, a typical club (ie not a tiny
struggling country club) seems to have 1/2 to 1/3 membership turnover per
year. In other words even the "strong" clubs don't actually have as big a
core as the raw numbers suggest.
The following is for a particular club which had a "GFA membership" that
varied from 123-137 over a four year period. There are a small number of GFA
life members and members claiming another club as their main club. But these
numbers are less than 10 so the total GFA membership of this club hasn't
exceeded 145 in the last 4 years.
Full
Years Number Currently
0 78 20
1 78 17
2 23 11
3 18 10
4 73 73
Note that some of the 4 yearers, while being members of GFA contnuously,
haven't been club members continuously. Also about 20 of those 4 yearers are
tug pilots (!)
The 0 yearers seem odd but it is can be broken down as:
17 who left as I started taking data so could have been any length of
membership (however examining the names shows there were only 4 long term
members who left, 1 for health, 2 to relocate and 1 a partner of a current
club member)
20 who joined recently and are still on the books as of April
the rest are 3 month memberships, foreign pilots etc.
SWK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Creswick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
That is a good list of current members.
What is interesting is that when you sort by club, you can see the strong
clubs, and the little, presumably weak clubs, those presumably "hanging
on"
at or near "critical mass".
There are also two names of people without current club name or membership
number.
What is not shown (and I think should be) is two more fields, pilot age,
and
date of first joining GFA. Thus, with sorting, we could see who which
clubs
have the "stayers", and which clubs have the "turnover".
Now, this begs another crucial question.
Since the GFA has a membership database from which this file was produced,
it must also still include all the "former members".
Why not produce another file of former members in the same format, adding
another field, date of leaving GFA.
Once we had all this data, we could clearly see which clubs have the
"turnover" and how long those people stayed. If the data then clearly
showed they mostly stayed only a year or so, then list discussion might be
better directed to the reality of the situation.
Regards.
_______________________________________________
Aus-soaring mailing list
[email protected]
To check or change subscription details, visit:
http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
