OK, I tried to not voice my opinion largely because people don't tend to be persuaded by facts, but apparently I lack the discipline. Typically, I think we tend to form opinions and then look for evidence that our position is correct, rather than look at data and then form our opinions. In this case, Gill is arguing for more recruitment. I suspect that much like people whose solution is to lower taxes for all economic problems, there are those for whom recruitment is the standard response to any given membership problem.
Gill may be perfectly correct about issues at the Grotto lever, however I will show you why I think he couldn't be more wrong when it comes to the NSS. For many years cavers have assumed that NSS membership is down because of lower recruitment and then they go on to try to explain why recruitment is down and why recruitment is necessary. However, is the assumption true and are there data available to us to test the assumption? There are data on NSS membership recruitment: the NSS gives each new member a serial number. When I was on the NSS Board, I asked for and got the last serial number issued for each year. I also asked for and received the total number of members at the end of each year. Then I made a graph of the data. I expected that if everyone were correct that the rate of new membership would have decreased and that attrition would be fairly constant. That is not what I found. The rate of recruitment formed a positive slope throughout the existence of the NSS (I have not looked at the data since 2006, but the membership numbers were shrinking even then). That means that the NSS is gaining members faster than it ever has. The curve that changed was not recruitment, but total members. And the change in slope was in 1995. Since 1995, we have had greater attrition of our members. The question is why? That question will not get answered by those who think that we just need to recruit more members. And the problem will not be solved if the problem is not the one people think it is. Poor retention of members means that people who have experienced the supposed benefits of NSS membership and found that it was not worth it to them as much as people used to value it. Let us consider some other data. 1) What separates an NSS member from being just a NSS News subscriber. The caving community was once known for its camaraderie. The NSS Conventions attracted an average of 20% of its membership from about 1965 through 1976. Since then, the highest attendance has been 14% and is often less than 5%. It is hard to feel like one is part of a family if one never meets most of them. 2) There was a survey conducted of the membership a few years back and I will grant that its methods were quite flawed. However, there were a few solid appearing trends in the membership. One of those was that those who cannot vote for the Board of Governors (Associate Members) had the highest confidence in the Board and essentially the longer a respondent had been in the NSS, the less confidence they had in the Board's decisions. My conclusion from these data were that additional recruitment is probably counter productive for at least a couple of reasons. If people who are currently or formerly in the NSS are dissatisfied with the NSS, then there is no reason to believe new members will be any more satisfied with the organization. If recruitment is at too high a rate, then there is a relatively high ratio of new members to old members which makes it more difficult to acculturate the new members into accepting NSS values, traditions, and sense of family. It is hard to know and like too many new people at once and they are less likely to feel valued and accepted. To the extent that there is recruitment, it does not need to be to join the NSS, it is to attend NSS Conventions. And NSS Conventions need to be in places that can reasonably be expected to attract a significant number of members, they should be inexpensive as possible not seen as fundraisers for the Society, and they should be simple and fun - no drinking zoos (ask someone about the Maine convention) and no host security that thinks their job is to protect cavers from having a good time, all convention activities should be within walking distance, and convention sites should not have special laws making normal caver activity illegal (cigarette smoking in the campground was a felony offense in Washington (2006). If adults want to engage is behavior that is less risky than caving while at the convention, quit interfering. We have become quite conservative as a Society. Compare the stories from White Salmon (1973) or Decorah (1974) with what happens at conventions today and you will ask as Alexia Cochrane did at the Idaho convention (1999) after not having attended in decades: "What happened to us?" In my opinion, we have gotten to be control freaks and have largely forgotten how to have fun. I say this characterizing NSS Conventions, not Texas cavers who tend to have more fun and be more permissive that most these days, I think. And finally, the NSS Board needs to quit alienating the membership, especially by ignoring the advice of its committees and blindsiding its members. Committees are composed of volunteers that are supposed to have more expertise and time to devote to particular issues that the NSS addresses. During my tenure on the NSS Board and on NSS Committees, I found that the NSS Board tended to ignore both its own policies and its committees and the Board tends to assume that merely publishing an agenda is enough to inform the members of all their proposed activities. Most of the Board activity is only of interest to Board members, if it is to anyone at all. However, there are issues that the members need to be involved in prior to hearing about it at the last minute, such as the recent proposal to stop printing the NSS News. Regardless of whether it is a good idea or not, it is not a good idea to present the members with a done deal. The member need to buy in prior to such decisions. Even it the Board votes the motion down, I expect that there will be members who will feel betrayed by the lack of discussion in the only official media that goes to essentially all the members, the NSS News. I suspect that these behaviors have a lot to do with why longer term members don't trust the Board. The longer one is a member, the more opportunities one has to see the NSS Board handle something badly and seldom handle anything well. I suspect there is a cumulative effect. If you have made it through my diatribe, feel free to dismiss it or believe it. Or you can do some digging and look at the facts for yourself. There are usually facts out there and one does not need to rely on intuition and pretend one is Socrates and deduce everything about the world. I could go on, but surely this is more than enough for now. A disgruntled recovering speleopolitican, Philip Moss On Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:39:59 -0500 Gill Edigar <gi...@att.net> writes: > What Mixon said! > But rather than complain and take measures which will decrease > membership even further I offer an all too simple solution to solve > it--and that lies in the Grottos. From where I sit I can see an NSS > membership that is growing old and Grotto activity mirrors that. > Traditionally, Grottos were the breeding ground of new cavers. One > of > the results of an older membership is a reduction or even a total > lack > of recruitment and training in Grottos. A couple of dozen years ago > there was a similar financial crisis within the NSS and a > membership > drive was held to push NSS membership to over 10,000 cavers. With > enough pushing and prodding that was accomplished. What I think is > needed now is another membership drive within the Grottos to both > recruit new cavers and to get their non-NSS members to join. I > suspect > that some Grottos have aged to the point that they no longer have > any > members qualified to teach vertical caving safely--equipment and > techniques have changed a lot over the decades--making things even > harder. My suggestion is that we put extra pressure on all Grottos > (especially those with college campuses nearby) to ACTIVELY recruit > new members and baby-sit them all the way to membership in the > Grotto > and the NSS. There are sufficient regional Projects extant that not > having training caves available is not acceptable as an excuse. > Older, > retired cavers can certainly gather cavers and get them to Grotto > meetings and Projects even if the old timers just sit around the > fire > all weekend. The problem with low NSS membership is a failure to > attract new cavers, not the dying off of the old ones. We need a > full-speed-forward effort in the entire caving community to > recruit, > train, and retain new cavers from the ranks of adventurous younger > people. > --Ediger
