Are you a secret British Orienteering member?

[IanD]

I'am one one those secret British Orienteering members

Do you really want to keep your contact details secret from your club? If so, why?

Not criticising, just curious.

[distracted]

I'm going to turn this situation around and ask:

Why, from the perspective of the club, do you want/need to contact your members directly?

[EddieH]

No 1 reason is to let people know what is happening.

For heavens sake what's the point of having a "club" if no-one knows who is in it and there is no inter communication

[seabird]

Why, from the perspective of the club, do you want/need to contact your members directly?

Above all else to recruit them to volunteer! Clubs would have difficulty sustaining a decent programme without the active input of the majority of their members. Volunteers only occasionally respond to recruitment missives in newsletters and on websites. They do respond to a personal approach. If that can be at an event - fine, but in practice it is often much easier to get hold of people by phone.

[Spookster]

... and in addition:

• to offer them club kit
• to invite them to club socials
• to tell them about club training & club-only events
• to ask them if they want to be in club teams for relays, CSC, YBT, PP, etc

[SeanC]

Above all else to recruit them to volunteer!

That might explain why people choose to be a secret member.

As the club coach, I always send an email to new orienteers welcoming them to the club and asking if they need any help or have any questions. I think it's important to capitalise on the enthusiasm of a new orienteer or they may drift off to other sports or activities.

Where clubs are sending their newsletters by email, there perhaps is no need to know the home address, and maybe even the phone number? This might be what distracted is getting at?

[Paul Frost]

Above all else to recruit them to volunteer!

Apparently that is one of the reasons why people want to withhold their details from the club.
It seems some clubs have a very aggressive policy of insisting members do a share in voluntary duties.

[NeilC]

To phone them up to check that they have forgotten to download and gone home rather than be lost in the forest (we don't ask members to fill in a form with their telephone number at every event).

[seabird]

It seems some clubs have a very aggressive policy of insisting members do a share in voluntary duties.

I fear my words are being misinterpreted.

In addition I totally agree with Spookster's extended list of reasons for clubs to know member's contact details, and only ommitted these for the sake of brevity. So goodbye brevity .

I have been very impressed with the encouraging nature of the emails sent out by SYO - my son is not a member but lives in their catchment area; is on their mailing list - and is pleased to be.

Regarding helping at events we encourage everyone to join a specialised helper team; start, registration etc etc for the larger events. That's helping a maximum of 3 times per year; in practice, for most folk, much less; for some - not at all.

When people are unable to help, their response is respected, and if they show any sign of feeling presurrised I avoid asking them for quite a while.

To get planner/organisers for our 40+ informal events I always scour the results to see who are the most active participants in each particular series and ask them first if they can put on an event. That usually produces the results required.

For larger events; planners fall over each other to get the events. Organisers are reticient; it needs quite a lot of work to recruit them. We never approach someone who has not had previous experience of organising at least a few Level D events.

As yet I have never encountered the "details withheld" situation. It would be disappointing if I did.

We appreciate there are some people who are unwilling to volunteer for their clubs, for a variety of reasons; work and family commitments etc. There are some who just don't want to help - but they are few.

In many ways it is no different from the significant number of orienteers who maintain membership of a club a long distance from their home, thereby making it unlikely that they will ever volunteer or be approached to volunteer. Their continued membership is usually not to avoid helping, but out of loyalty to their old club.

[Paul Frost]

I fear my words are being misinterpreted.

My comment was not in response to anything you said, it was some feedback I picked up whilst trying to resolve the problem for people entering the Scottish 6 Days and not getting the £2 discount which started this thread off.

[AndyC]

Some elements of helping are independent of club membership - I've come across first timers who were willing to help retrieve controls, for example, and general tasks like replacing controls, checking on late runners, pushing cars out of the mud are often done by people not of the club concerned.
The only tasks that require BO membership (presumably for insurance reasons) are planner, controller and organiser as far as I know -and they require some knowledge of the sport so membership makes sense.

I suspect that a lot of the 200 ticked "no spam" automatically without thinking that "actually if they send me details of events that would be nice"

[roadrunner]

Above all else to recruit them to volunteer!

Apparently that is one of the reasons why people want to withhold their details from the club.
It seems some clubs have a very aggressive policy of insisting members do a share in voluntary duties.

Even if that's the case, it's not something a new member would know about

[orient]

Above all else to recruit them to volunteer!

That might explain why people choose to be a secret member.

As the club coach, I always send an email to new orienteers welcoming them to the club and asking if they need any help or have any questions. I think it's important to capitalise on the enthusiasm of a new orienteer or they may drift off to other sports or activities.

Where clubs are sending their newsletters by email, there perhaps is no need to know the home address, and maybe even the phone number? This might be what distracted is getting at?

How are you going to send them an email if you dont get the email address in the first place?

[SeanC]

I'm implying that one option is to just collect the email address and just send that to clubs.

[Shropshire born]

I'am one one those secret British Orienteering members

Do you really want to keep your contact details secret from your club? If so, why?

Not criticising, just curious.

I'am only a member of BO and a club so that i can take part in events such as the British day and night champs which are not open to non members. I like to take part in events and have fun but not get involved. This may sound selfish and not part of the Orienteering spirit bit I have other hobbies with which I spend more time and get involved with.