Increasing CORSA membership - Ideas

[Allan Lacki]

Hi Bob,

No disrespect taken. Please let me clarify my email. It may have not come across the way I intended.

My list of "three things that people can't get anywhere else" is limited to those things I perceive as membership benefits currently. The list does not include additional things we may be able to provide to them in the future. And I agree with your opinion - the three things on my list are not much of an inducement to join CORSA - unless you really like the Communique.

Personally, I think the Communique is worth the dues I pay for CORSA membership, but evidently, there are plenty of former CORSA members who do not. And certainly, Corvair owners who have never been CORSA members may not even appreciate how good the Communique really is. Many have never read an issue of the Communique.

Insurance coverage? Are you referring to the Hagerty discount on classic car insurance? If so, we can add that to the list of current benefits.

I'm sure you know that, aside from that, CORSA offers no insurance coverage to its members except for those volunteers who organize and conduct Chapter events. That's not a bad thing. We want to attract those kind of people to CORSA especially. All of us here on the Board have volunteered to do work in our local Chapters, so we have an appreciation for the insurance CORSA provides to the Chapters. In making a pitch for new members, we can say, "Get involved. We've got you covered!"

To determine what would attract new members, we could do a survey using the VirtualVairs, the CorvairForum, Corvair Center Forum, etc. There are plenty of people on those discussion boards who are not members of CORSA. We'd have to be careful to pose the survey questions to ensure we get some useful responses. The CORSA value proposition comes up from time to time on the Corvair Center Forum, and although lots of people do well in defending CORSA, the nay-sayers seldom offer constructive criticism except to say they don't want to pay CORSA dues!

There was at least one exception, however. A non-member offered the following suggestions on the Corvair Center Forum in April:

Discounted movie tickets
Discounted hotels
FB banks
Lasik discounts
prescription savings
Amerigas discounts
Grainger discounts
Office Depot discount
Verizon discount
Avis car rental discount
Case IH discount
Polaris discount
GM discount

That person also wrote:

I know that all of these things are not for us, but if CORSA could find a way to provide VALUE to its membership, it would be sure to grow! Why not start with approaching GM and see if they would be willing to give CORSA members automotive purchasing discounts? It would not have to be something huge, just a "Product Loyalty Reward" of like an additional $200 to $500 off the purchase of a new GM vehicle? Or even some simpler discounts like 20% discounts to any of GM's venues, Museums, etc. etc. GM would not be losing any large sums of money to do this. (How many Corvair owners are there?) But the publicity would be huge.

Maybe none of these ideas are practical, or maybe they would cost the club money to do, but at least the guy offered something to consider.

Al

[Jack Bacon]

I have been out of town so i will chime in tomorrow after work. One quick thing I can think of is we need more content on the CORSA website

Jack

[vairmech]

Al and All, the one thing I see is with offering anything we have walk the fine line of not endorsing a product. That is in the by-laws. Although I think the GM discount thing is worth going after. We might be able to offer a few discounts from vendors or those that advertise in the Communique. We might have to add a disclaimer that it is not an endorsement of the product.

[Jack Bacon]

One benefit of joining CORSA is a 5% discount when buying insurance from Hagerty. We need to obtain discounts from other vendors and other places. Imagine getting enough discounts on vendors or products you use to pay for your $45 membership!

We also need more content on the website such as how to videos, etc. etc.

We need to contact the different auto magazines so that when they write an article about Corvairs which happens fairly often that they mention CORSA. Usually, this does not happen which is a real lost opportunity.

Jack

[Jack Bacon]

Brainstorm ideas, prioritize the better ones, implement, followup on what works, fine tune the best solutions again measure membership growth.

Jack

[Bob Helt]

Al reported:

I'm sure you know that, aside from that, CORSA offers no insurance coverage to its members except for those volunteers who organize and conduct Chapter events.

Bob continues

I'm sorry to have to report that I did not know that. I have not been active directly in Corsa (although I'm a charter member) for some years. so my memory of things has faded. And things change too.

For example, back in my involvement days. (25+ years ago) we were told (as I remember) that the Corsa insurance policy coverage included ALL PARTICIPANTS (not just the volunteers you describe) of ANY Corsa or Corsa CHAPTER sponsored event (including chapter meetings), such as driving events or car shows.

Apparently, this is not true mow. I wonder whether it was back then.

So the racers at Convention driving events aren't covered now. Wow.

Bob Helt

[vairmech]

Bob, Al worded that wrong.

Here is what it should say; CORSA offers no insurance coverage to its members except for those volunteers who organize, conduct and participate in Chapter events.

This does not mean that they have road insurance for a license plate but is tuned to if there is an accident and someone is hurt, everyone is covered. The insurance would cover the driver if he were sued, and any Corsa officer, etc.

[Allan Lacki]

Bob and Ken, We really need to go to J.C. Taylor and get a clarification on that. The insurance policy doesn't say anything about members except for those members who are officers. Al

[vairmech]

For all these years the insurance has been touted that it covers club meetings, certainly it couldn't be that only the officers of the meeting are covered.
We could ask Harry and JC Taylor. This is something that needs to be known especially to the BoD.

[Bob Helt]

I hate to be so pessimistic, but I am really convinced that WE and Corsa are dead in the water trying to increase the membership unless we do something about getting membership fees down (and way way down) from $45. We have to get the one year fee down to below $25 and more like $20. That should be our first goal!!!!

If we can't do that, then all of our effort is wasted in my opinion. $45 is exhorbitant ( not from a need point of view) but from a prospective member's or renewal member's point of view.

How can we get the membership fee (for everyone) down to $20 per year?

Bob Helt

[vairmech]

Bob, I think we need a compromise on that membership fee. I can see the $20 as an introductory electronic full membership and then we need to Increase dues to $35 for electronic full membership and $55 for hard copy membership with NO electronic access to current copies, (I'm not sure that is possible).
I have just checked quite a few car clubs and the membership dues are all over the place, $24 to $70. Some appear to be bargains and then others not so much and that is NOT based on how much they charge for membership. I actually see a few things that we have talked about for "value" in the other clubs. Here is the list of clubs that I took a quick look at;

http://www.vmcca.org/join-or-renew/

http://www.vcca.org/application_to_join.htm

http://www.vvwca.com/membership.html

https://www.oldsmobileclub.org/become-a-member/

http://www.falconclub.com/

http://www.antiquemotorcycle.org/index. ... n-the-club

https://netforum.avectra.com/eweb/shopp ... Membership

members.classiccarclub.org/Join.aspx This didn't come through as a link but I think if you copy and paste it will take you there. It did for me.

I know, there are a couple of NON car clubs and one we are not eligible for but still they are all clubs that we can be fighting for membership people. I wanted to list these here as a reference because later on I would like to see a few things they have incorporated into our own web site.

[Allan Lacki]

Speaking of dues, I wonder why more people don't sign up for the "Virtual Membership" option, like me. It's $37 per year instead of $45, and aside from loss of the hardcopy Communique, Virtual members get the same benefits as Hardcopy members. But only 227 people have signed up for Virtural membership. Maybe our membership doesn't even know about the Virtual option.

We could actually lower the dues for Virtual membership to $31 by increasing the dues for Hardcopy membership to $47, as shown in the analysis I prepared a few months ago.

[Bob Helt]

Thanks Ken and Allan.
Good points well taken. But concerning all those other club's membership dues, the one important thing that is missing is, are those clubs losing or gaining members via their dues policies? I.e., the amount of dues? We need to know how their dues policies are affecting their membership status: Declining, static or growing?. We KNOW that we are losing members on a continual basis and need to STOP this loss. At the rate of loss we have, Corsa will disappear in less than 10 years.

Also, I know that I am infringing on the BOD responsibilities but we need to keep them informed. Thus, I suggest we formulate an income raising plan to reduce the $45 mmembership cost.

Bob Helt

[Allan Lacki]

According to Hagerty, CORSA is not alone. Here is a link to an article posted on the Hagerty website. It offers a few suggestions to reverse the trend, but none of them are silver bullet cures:

https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos ... ip-decline

[Bob Helt]

In trying to analyze the so-called big picture, Has anyone ever contacted those members who did NOT renew their membership and find out why? We may be able to gain some valuable information via this route. Or even be able to convince them to renew after all. It seems to me this is another starting point.

And if the the reason is because they sold their Corvair, we could try to find out to whom and contact the buyer to join.

What is it about this font that prints such weak w's? wwwwwwwwww

Bob Helt

[Allan Lacki]

Bob, I'm pretty sure Harry Jensen could generate a list of members who recently dropped out, complete with phone numbers and/or email addresses. You could take that list, pick out some of the people at random, and do a survey. Al