[SEL] Revitalizing your club

[George Best]

Get your mind out of the gutter! ;-)

I'm talking about the engine club you most likely belong to.

Maybe you're lucky and belong to a club that is energized and growing,
however a lot of us belong to clubs that have existed for years and to
be honest are in a state of decline.

What are some of the things you're club does which gets the membership
involved in the club?

Of course most clubs have one or more shows a year, but what else do you
do?

For example my club every winter has a class on the last Saturday of
each month.  These classes cover most of the restoration topics related
to our hobby.  We occasionally have a guest speaker come in to
demonstrate something or club members put on part of a class.  After
doing these classes for years, most of us are attending mostly due to
the social aspects of talking to our buddies to find out what they're
working on, etc.

My club has four general meetings during the year (Feb,Apr,Jun,Oct) and
these meeting are generally hosted by one of the club members with a
larger collection and room to accommodate the 40-50 people that may show
up.  We have two other meetings, but the Dec one is for election of
officers and is held at a restaurant.  The Aug meeting is basically a
ice cream social held during our main show.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to get more members involved by
having an "open shop" program or programs.

One version is for members who would like to show their
collection/shop/projects/etc to select a date and have it published in
the club newsletter.  It would be an open invitation for people to come
by between 9am and 3pm (or any time period the person wants to set).
The idea is for members to select dates not conflicting with club
meetings and events.  Ideally, a club would have enough members
interested in doing this that throughout the year most Saturday's
excluding show weekends would have one or more members having a "open
shop".

Another version would be to have some members host a weekly shop night.
I did this several years ago with another club member.  Every Monday
night during the winter he'd come over to my shop and we'd work on his
engine or one of my projects.  I still pretty much have Monday night as
my night out in the shop, but I'm on my own now.  So if there were
members with nice shops willing to let others come over to work on
projects, that would be another option.

Comments?

George