Tim M wrote:Something else I've pondered is if FAST has thought of printing up business cards to generate additional club members? I realize the club isn't about making money, but a club must continually grow to replace members that have moved on, etc. I come across many autos at my place of work that might be interested, but without standing outside waiting for them to return...no way to pass the word.
Tim, I'll try to take a stab at answering this. It's really about "balance". With the sites that we run at (SPC in particular), and the way we choose to run our events, and the number of runs that we've grown accustomed to, 60-70 entries per event is the maximum we can comfortably do. We could do more, and yes, some clubs do 100-150 or even 200 cars per event... but we've decided that the fun factor does NOT increase with that many more cars, only the hassles.
We used to publicize our events heavily on the Tampa Racing forum and any other local forum we could find, and that's what built the club initially. Every event got a very thorough pre-event post on TR stating everything that a newb would need to know, we answered questions, encouraged people to come out, and it worked very well. We got to the point that we were pushing 60-65 or more cars per event and on the verge of having to turn people away, so we made the conscious decision to STOP the outside publicity and let the club exist on "word-of-mouth" and the website for a while. And that's been working well for quite some time.
This is the first weekend that we've had a low turnout in a very long time, I wouldn't panic about it. But, if it does turn out to be a trend that is strong enough to affect the operation of the club, we can return to stronger "marketing" methods.
For now, if you run into folks you think might be interested, just write down the website address and hand it to them.
and one point, heck, two points, for Mark!
