Growing Membership A Case Study of Success Ontario region

[Bruce H.]

#577965

continued…

The Viper Owners Association offers Viper owners the opportunity to join with local region owners while being connected to one another across the United States and around the world, together offering compelling benefits, both tangible and intangible. The combined, coordinated, reimagined and enthusiastic efforts at national and regional level has the potential to dramatically increase membership well beyond the VOA’s previous highs. And if anyone offers to buy you a steak dinner when the VOA blows past 2000 members, be sure to ask if dessert will be included 😀

Please feel free to ask any questions, and if your region has a story of membership growth please start a new thread and do share!

Cheers,

Bruce Hadfield

Ontario Region President
vcotracks@gmail.com
http://www.viperclubofontario.com

[01sapphirebob]

#578002

Bruce,

Thanks for taking the time to type this up. Web stuff is something that im interested in for sure. Our website is only six years old and already im looking to change it. We use wix but perhaps its the “theme” that im not happy with. The last website redesign that I was a part of had a more mobil friendly version. Any updates done for the PC version automatically updated the mobil version. We dont have that at the moment. However, what we have is able to be updated by us and was set up for free. We had a website ready to go with minimal cost to us. That was huge in out early stages.

[Loud]

#578017

Thanks for sharing your input Bruce, and congratulations on your achievements in the Ontario club. Here are some changes made to AZ last year which helped us grow from 40 to 62 members.

Communication:
We communicate via the below channels about our upcoming events, events completed, meetings, club news, club health, etc; and we communicate often.
– Website
– Email
– Facebook
– Instagram
– WhatsApp

Spread the word:
We printed business cards with all communication channels listed and distributed this among our members to carry with them or in their cars. This has proven successful especially when we go to car shows and see a Viper we do not recognize and leave this card on their windshield. We’ve had a few members join us this way.

Monthly meetings:
First Thursday of every month is our monthly meeting. Same location, same time, every month. We have free giveaways [trinkets] or raffle items at most of our meetings. We have about 20 cars and 40 people on average attend these monthly. We discuss what’s upcoming, club news, officer updates, and open forum. Folks mingle and show off their cars along with some food and beverages.

Cruises:
We have a cruise each month as we are lucky to be surrounded by great drives. Along with members, any non-member who has not participated in a cruise with the club is welcome. Another successful approach as anyone that cruises with us gets hooked on the fun and friendships. We even had a couple move here from Indiana based on the friendships they made here in the Viper community. Participation is usually 18-26 cars. Most cruises are one day, and a couple are overnight cruises. The day cruises are no cost cruises to members, except their food and beverage, and at times, the club picks up the tab.

Each Aug [I planned one in 2020 when I was not a President as well], we have a 5 day / 4 night cruise going out of state. This requires a pre-run to plan appropriately which I’ve done in both cases and have another to plan for this year. We welcome our neighboring states to participate and SoCal is always supportive by participating. After Utah and CA, we will be going to Telluride, CO this year. We’ve usually had about 25 cars on average on these trips.

Track days:
The tracks closest to us either have sound limits and hence cannot accommodate us or too expensive. We have two track events a year at Inde which is 3 hrs away. We combine this with a cruise and very popular event. As a new track gets inaugurated next month, we are looking to add another couple track days to our calendar.

Give back to the community
We always had and continue to have a toy drive for kids during our holiday parties. In addition, we added a drive to give back to the community once a quarter. It can be turkey donation [largest turkey donation to St Vincent DePaul was last year from the Viper club totaling 310 turkeys]. We also have “cars and cans” where we donate canned food, or participate in veteran events.

Misc:
Outside of our 32-36 events each year, we also have adhoc gatherings at someone’s home, brunches, happy hours, car shows, etc; making it a very busy year. We close the year with a mega holiday party.

Sponsorship:
With some major help of our Sponsorship Director, Marty, and other BOD members, we were able to secure over $6k in sponsorships. This enabled us to do the giveaways, paid lunches, etc; We support our sponsors by spreading the word about them on our website, on our social sites, and sending folks their way. We also have businesses that give us discounts to anyone from the AZ Viper Club. One such company is Discount Tire which saves us a good amount of $.

I’ve been lucky to have the members I do. They are very supportive of our plans and show great participation at our events. Their participation is what encourages me and by BOD to plan these events.

Anil.

[Bruce H.]

#578022

Anil, thank you for outlining your club’s excellent and comprehensive practices and initiatives!

You’ve given me some great ideas on improvements I can make, and others as well I’m sure.

Good job, and congrats on your success in growing your membership!

[Shannon Whitehead]

#38699

This is a case study of how the Ontario region increased membership by 92% in 2021. Every region can plan to implement some or all of these initiatives by preparing the club with the basics, offering fun and value, and effective promotion. VOA can only do so much nationally…regions need to do the rest.

Prepare Your Club

Be the Leader. Resistance to change is natural. As a new president wanting to make sweeping change I was prepared to put in the extra effort, and very fortunate to have directors who also rose to the challenge of our new and exciting direction. We also did experience some changes on our board.

Assign Director Roles. Individual and group roles to cover the following responsibilities.

Prepare a Budget. Estimate your club’s membership and other revenues and all expenses. Generating growth would require spending more than our estimated revenues. Investing some cash reserves was required. A 5-year budget was prepared and approved using conservative growth estimates and deficit spending until the budget was balanced in the 5th year. (We ended up running a surplus in year 1!)

Membership. Two directors focused to attract new and encourage the return of past members.

$50 Introductory Membership. Used to attract owners in outlying areas where we had not held events previously, and only when it was obvious that they would not join through the VOA at the higher rates.

New Direct Membership. This renewal option was created in response to the VOA’s financial crisis, increased 2022 dues, and our inability to collect our region’s share of dues owed (which was eventually resolved). At the current exchange rate, a $195 VOA membership with printed magazine now costs $245 in Canada, and many members said they would not renew for 2022. There are plans to create a VOA International level for 2023 that will address the reduced benefits available to regions like ours.

Area Directors. Our events and membership were almost entirely close to Toronto. We wanted to expand membership and events into populated areas east and west where we had once had and lost members, and we would need directors focused on these areas to develop them effectively.

Area Event Coordinators. We created 2 of these non-board positions to assist a director in a large area.

Facebook & Social Media. We had a club FB private Group and public Page that were quite inactive. We joined other Viper FB Groups & Pages and started posting event and club info to promote our club.

Newsletter. We created a monthly newsletter so club news and event info could be communicated by posting on club Facebook, emailed to members and past members, and posted on our website where they are archived on a Newsletter Page.

Website. Ours was old and in serious need of updating. We ended up building a new site that we could easily update and maintain ourselves. Our VP’s wife was able to create it using a Wix.com program. http://www.viperclubofontario.com. Key features are the Events, Gallery and Newsletter Pages.

Windshield Promo Cards. We used an idea from Capital Region and printed up post card size cards with club and contact info on them for members to keep in their car and pass out to other Vipers they see.

Sponsors. Our past sponsors had drifted away until we had none for a couple of years. We reached out and told them about all the exciting things we were doing, how we’d promote them relentlessly in our newsletter and website, and suddenly we had 11 join and raised $4700! These funds were used for greater event funding than originally budgeted.

Apparel. The club had boxes that had been long forgotten. We pulled them out, took them to events, and sold over $2300! Selling them at events created excitement and club pride. We’re planning a new program for 2022 where members can order from a catalogue and have our club logo put on anything.

Photography. We had two members taking event photos and collected some from members as well. Event photos are posted in their individual folders on our Gallery Page, and some of those photos used in our newsletters to add more interest.

Offer Fun & Value

2021 Event Calendar. Started planning it late fall 2020 and released in December 2020 to encourage 2021 renewals. We planned them with an effort to spread them out so every member had local ones, with some planned in outlying areas where we intended to increase membership.

Track Events. We had lost many members over the years as our track events slowly stopped, and weren’t attracting those we knew who were track rats. We planned 3 high-performance driving schools and 8 lapping days on 5 different race tracks, 4 in Ontario, and 1 in Quebec, and many joined for those.

Track Rebate. A one-time $100 track rebate paid for those participating in a school or lapping day.

Event Funding. New policy…Every event would be at least partially supported with club and sponsor funds. Ice cream on a cruise or meal appetizers for the table. We prepared a 5-year budget of deficit spending of surplus cash reserves to retain and encourage new members with an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Event Participation Awards. We announced keeping track of event participation at the beginning of the season to identify those that attended the most events, and announced the winners at our last fall event. Awards were then ordered and will be presented to winners at our AGM. A lot of fun, and we also learned who hadn’t attended any, or only 1 or 2, which is useful for future planning.

Outstanding Contribution Awards. Reward and encourage outstanding contribution to the club.

Ontario Viper Event (ONVE 2021). Our first annual Signature event that members can plan and look forward to! ONVE 2021-Windsor & Surrounding Area was a 4-day event, ONVE 2022 Niagara Falls & Surrounding Area is our 4-days this year, and ONVE 2023 Kingston & Surrounding Area following that.

Membership Retention & Outreach

Expired Member List. It’s available on the VOA Portal. Develop a plan to contact all.

Newsletter to Past Members. Our first monthly newsletter went out in February and featured our ambitious event calendar, event funding, and other new initiatives that created a strong value proposition. The March issue expanded on and reinforced that message. Then we downloaded the Expired Member list from the VOA Portal and sent emails with our newsletters attached to them
.
Phone Calls. Starting March, 2021, all 2020 members who hadn’t renewed for 2021, and those from our Expired list were called by the new president to personally discuss all the club improvements which encouraged many to renew. Past members were amazed as no one had ever called them from the club before. We discovered that our track program was of interest to many. With 120 expired members it took until May to contact most and then we stopped for the summer. We noted quite a few had sold their Vipers since leaving the club, with others busy with other things, and some not interested in coming back just yet, with Covid dampening spirits.

Strategic Outreach. We had targeted geographical areas in Ontario where we knew there would be many owners but had few members, and had planned local events for 2021 to attract them. We sent emails to past members in those areas, but mostly found owners on Facebook by posting club info.

Facebook. I was never a Facebook user before but I’m sure sold on it now for finding and attracting new members. We join and posted on several Viper related Groups and Pages. Some owners contacted us and joined, others we identified from their FB posts and we reached out to them to join.

VOA Ontario Forum. Our club had not been posting in this driveviper.com forum and it must have looked like our club had become inactive. We started posting about all of our events and club benefits.

Know Your Members

Welcome and introduce new members at events. My phone calls to past members revealed some that hadn’t felt welcomed, and left on their own. Directors now look out for those not part of the fun and we introduce all in the driver’s meeting at the beginning of cruises, when seating for meals, etc.

Wear name badges. Doing that helped encouraged members to be more welcoming and inclusive.

Avoid cliques. Ask your directors mingle at events. At meals we seat a director at every table. Talk to the members you don’t know.

Connect local members. Introduce new members to other members that you think they might have something in common with, perhaps just by where they live.

Involve new members in planning events. New members are often new Viper owners also, and among the most enthusiastic members. At events I asked several new members if they had an event idea for 2022, and every one did. I asked if they would help plan it and every one said YES! That gets them meeting other members. More events, more fun for all!

Studied who our members are. And prospective members! Age ranges and interests (cruises, car shows, meals, track, over-nights, tour attractions). We added many track events for that reason in 2021. and have added car shows, meets with Ferrari, Ford Cobra and GT clubs, and other new events for 2022.

Here are the results

After experiencing annual membership declines since 2015 we ended 2020 with 64 members.

2021

56- 2020 VOA Members slowly renewed for 2021, losing 6 due to selling car, moving, etc .
20 – VOA Expired members from 2014-2019 renewed due to our improvements and outreach efforts.
25 – New 2021 VOA members, almost all a result of our direct outreach efforts.

101 VOA Members at 12/31/21 plus…

9 – New “Introductory” members in targeted development areas from our outreach efforts.
13 – New Direct members, after Oct 1, 2021, all from our outreach efforts.

123 – Total Members

Our membership grew because we created an improved value club experience, and our comprehensive outreach efforts really sold our club memberships.

Our members love all the club improvements and the very pronounced new and welcoming club atmosphere. While still early in 2022, and months before the Vipers can be put back on the road, all signs indicate that our membership renewals will be very strong.

7 Basics For Growth

1. Prepare a club budget, and don’t be afraid to spend extra if you have it to promote growth

2. Plan club events and other club benefits that can be promoted the following ways…

3. Create or update your website VOA with 2022 content and all club benefits

4. Print off your Expired Member list from the VOA Portal to identify potential renewals back to 2014

5. Contact current and past membership monthly with what’s new for 2022, with your updated website link. Start phoning those who haven’t renewed starting February 1st or March 1st.

6. Create and keep your social media and VOA region forum active and interesting

7. And lastly…Never Stop Promoting Your Club!

Our greatest challenges were the same as national and most regions I’m sure…having enough help. Unless you have the time to do most of the heavy lifting, assemble a strong team, and be prepared for some to find it too much. Choose board members that are positive, enthusiastic, have the time and capacity, and they just might be some of your newer members. Experience has very little to do with what needs to be done, but enthusiasm and energy is everything. Also consider retired members who may be looking for a new project to keep busy.

How are we improving for 2022? Membership retention and continue with outreach to non-members, and there’s still a LOT of them out there! Our event participation tracking identified that 52 out of 101 VOA members didn’t attend any events. We need to know why and adjust what we do. Our 2022 calendar of events is larger and covers includes more types of events. I’ll be making a lot of phone calls.

I hope regions will find these initiatives and strategies applicable to their clubs, and helpful in increasing their memberships. When presenting many of these initiative to my board there was universal skepticism. They were only comfortable with budgeting for an increase from 64 to 68 members. As number passed that I was offered a steak dinner if we hit 80. Well, that was a delicious steak, and 43 members ago!

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