Retaining Regional Officers

[R W Burgess]

We have a local region in Virginia that is close to folding up, because they can not find someone to step up to the plate and become their leader, their President. Their present President has been there for 12 years. He needs a break. I just wonder does anyone have any new ideas to help prevent the club from closing down???

 

Wayne

[alsancle]

This is also a problem for every small club in the hobby.  I have seen the same issue with the CCCA regions, my steam car club, the REO club, all of them.   I don't have an answer.

[R W Burgess]

5 hours ago, alsancle said:

This is also a problem for every small club in the hobby.  I have seen the same issue with the CCCA regions, my steam car club, the REO club, all of them.   I don't have an answer.

+

I understand that the Wilmington NC group is doing much better, maybe Matt Hinson can give us update?

 

W.

[MCHinson]

Wayne, I don't know if I can suggest a quick fix, but I do have an idea about how to combat that sort of thing... it just takes time. For the short term, I would see if another current officer was willing to step up and be President, perhaps obtainable if the current President was willing to serve as Vice President for a year to support them. Maybe not ideal for the current President, but probably better than seeing the club fold. 

 

Our Chapter is active. The important thing is that you need to attract new members constantly. We have members who attend the local Cars and Coffee and other local non-AACA car club shows and typically sign up a new member or more every month. That keeps new blood coming into the Chapter. Driving your old cars, and being willing to speak to other potential new members about their car and about AACA, and having a packet of the forms needed to sign up a new member available when you "sell" them on joining, makes it easy to sign up new members. 

 

The second part of the issue that you are bringing up is a bit more difficult but still can be improved if you have a plan in place. What officers does your Region or Chapter have? In our Chapter, we have an executive board that is comprised of the Elected President, Elected Vice President, Elected Secretary, Elected Treasurer, Elected Member at Large, and the Ex-Officio, who is the immediate Past President. Having the Ex-officio on the board helps with continuity from year to year, in case of a large number of new board members happen to be nominated and elected in a particular year. The real key to long term sucession planning is the Member at Large position. For that position, the nominating committee typically trys to seek out a relatively new member who has shown himself or herself to be enthusiastic about the Club. In a perfect world, the Member at Large has been in the club a year or two when approached to run for the position. In addition to being on the board and taking part in other board decisions, the primary "job" of the member at large position is to sell 50/50 tickets at our club meeetings. This gets the Member at Large exposure to all of the club members. He or she gets to know the members through selling them tickets every month. After a year or two as Member at Large, it is often easy to get that individual to consider running for Secretary or Treasurer, and then perhaps in another year or two, they can likely run for Vice President or President.  It does not always work out that way, but that is the general idea of developing members to run for leadership positions in a local club. 

 

Having one person be President for more than about 2 years is typically a warning sign that the club has become stagnant. It is time to get some new blood into the leadership, but you have to develop your members so that they feel comfortable in being a leader. You are unlikely to find a new member who wants to jump into being a President or Vice President of a club shortly after they become a member, and it would probably not be a good thing if you could.  

 

 

 

   

[Walt G]

On 10/26/2023 at 7:04 PM, MCHinson said:

The important thing is that you need to attract new members constantly

This is imperative. But you also need to make the new members feel welcome. A new member doesn't have to be someone who is new to the hobby!  The club needs to have high interest but low cost activities that will encompass the whole family. It can happen if some ideas are taken into consideration. If you will be visiting a persons car collection - have a reasonable fee that will provide lunch or even a coffee and donut offering. This happened recently with a tour to two car collections organized by the Metropolitan Region CCCA. Wonderful tour so other members of the family riding along could see the countryside that most never had. No speeches except for a thanks to the two fellows who had the group to their garages. Perhaps have a joint club event not just for the quantity of people to attend but so both clubs can have their members see what the other club is like, how cordial the people are. One possibility is to have a guest speaker and the two clubs can thus have a common reason to be together. Try to make any activity of some interest to all- not necessarily just about cars. People like to see pictures, places, etc that they are not aware of. Some of the events should involve a younger generation as well who can attend with their parents or grandparents - make it an interesting family affair.