roadrunner wrote:The trouble with the "not joining a club" approach is that, with smaller membership, there will be fewer people to fill the necessary volunteer roles so that we can put on events - I'm not thinking of the skilled jobs like planner, organiser and controller as these will always be down to committed orienteers, but the others like car parking, taking entries, manning the start etc, which even a beginner can do.
This is a fair point. I would be interested to see data related to infrequent participants. My guess is that they split into two groups- newcomers and drifters.
Newcomers will, I suggest, be people who are more likely to be driven away than encouraged to become more frequent participants, if membership is aggressively pushed at them.
Drifters are people who have been more involved in the past, but participation has dropped--perhaps due to injury or getting bored. These are people who will probably help occasionally if prodded, and perhaps will be more likely to do so if they remain members.
The challenge is to work out a system that increases recruitment of the first group, and retention of the second. What may be good for one may have a negative effect on the other.
I also think care must be taken to not pressurise newcomers. Demanding people take on tasks because there is a need for their support is not a good way to recruit. Much better to get them involved to the point where they want to help. People are increasingly time poor- especially in the age groups from which orienteering desperately needs to recruit. If you even inadvertently tell people that you don't want them to participate unless they also volunteer, you create a self-defeating cycle of decline. And I have heard people saying this explicitly.