Hi,
I haven't been keeping too up-to-date with b-c recently, but I did see a thread
started whereby someone was looking for advice on what to do with a club to
keep folks active.
Fact is, what your club does depends on the club membership. If you are in a
club that is made up of people that like to brass plate their radiators, at
some point you'll probably brass plate your radiator... or maybe not.
The point is that some folks have fun that way. Period. That is neither good or
bad, it just the way it is. If your local club doesn't do what you like, find
another club or start your own!
What I can tell you is that some clubs _need_ organization, and others do not.
The ones that need organization are okay for some folks. The ones that do not
need organization are okay too.
I belong to a couple of local-ish clubs, and they both are relatively loosely
run. Both clubs seem to survive due to some sort of critical mass. As long as
folks come up with activities and they let other folks know in advance, things
will keep going.
Now what type of activities do we do? Tours, local and distant. We went to VTR
this year with 12 cars from all over New England, for instance. That wound up
being over 2500 miles driven to-from the event. Rallyes, we had
several gimmick rallyes this year. Social events, we even had 6 TR6s show up to
go to a drive in movie theatre one night this summer. Car shows, these can be
anything from formal to completely unorganized.
How do you set these things up? Most importantly, you need to set some sort of
calendar up and then stick to it. Further, you need to have some sort of
mechaninsm to get the calendar info out to interested folks. This can be done
in any form from a simple calendar to a monthly newsletter. Then you need
advocates to help promote your cause. As an example, I have delivered flyers to
an event in Boston, MA to cars at a show in Bowie, MD (400+ miles away). That
escapade got a guy from NJ to drive up to Boston for NET's Day of Triumph. It
wasn't likely to actually get people to show up, but I was able to demonstrate
some enthusiasm. That gets folks interested! Once you get them interested, just
about anything can happen.
When you look at club membership vs. the number of actual cars out there,
you'll probably figure out that the actual folks that do join clubs etc. are
just the tip of the iceburg. Heck, I know of TR6's in my home town that I have
never seen at a Triumph event. And my home town isn't that big! Some people
like to join, others do not.
If there is real interest in this subject, I have other thoughts that I would
be more than happy to share on this forum. If you want fast response from me,
however, I think you should CC me directly, as I'm likely to be far behind on
my b-c for seom time to come.
bye,
rml
p.s. Bob Hamilton, I will be sending you some rallye hints sometime in the near
future.
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