Does your district have a lot of small clubs? Over the last few years, is the number growing (bad), or are the small clubs getting bigger (good)?
Here’s some interesting graphs about TI membership world-wide, and also of each district:
http://mikeraffety.com/ClubSize/
(Be sure to click on your district number for local details.)
Fortunately, the number of clubs with 20+ members seems to be growing each year, though not in all districts, and the average number of members per club has edged upwards as well, from 19.3 in June 2006 to 20.0 in June 2010.
How does D71 (Britain and Ireland) manage to have less than 6% of their clubs at 0-12 members, what’s the secret to their success? D46 (New York area) and D85 (China) aren’t far behind, so it’s not just a matter of being overseas.
The Distinguished Club Program (DCP) has an interesting effect on membership; when graphing clubs by size in a histogram, there’s a sharp increase at the 20-member threshold. While there’s just 247 clubs at 19 members (on June 30, 2010, worldwide), there’s 1,362 at 20 members.
There’s a lot of clubs eligible for club coaches, 23% globally as of June 2010. I’ll be talking more about club coaches in my next blog entry. So many districts don’t take advantage of this very effective program!
Feedback is appreciated!
Hi Mike: I am LGM for D71 so thought I would spill the beans as it were! 🙂
Firstly, a little context here on our District. Over 90% of our clubs are community clubs. We have had little success with company clubs in the past – it is something I am trying to fathom as part of my role. In our District, at least, we find that community clubs are more responsive to DCP and keeping membership above 20. Frankly, I was shocked to learn at the Intl Convention how few clubs make DCP across the organisation. In our District it is expected that you will.
However, specifically on the 20+ members, as a District, we have always viewed a club that falls beneath 20 members as falling into an Amber zone. At this stage, we encourage the club to come up with new plans to help revitalise growth. Sometimes that program may come from within the committee or club. Sometimes we will encourage experienced members from outside to help. Either way, while that person may not be an ‘official’ club coach can use the project as their HPL. This has tended to work pretty well over the years.
In our experience, once clubs get to 12 members there is already a big deterioration in club meetings that has taken place. We try to arrest the decline that much earlier, hence our numbers.
Hope that helps.
Freddie, thanks for that, very interesting. For my other readers, D71 (Britain/Ireland) not only has the highest average club membership and the lowest percentage of small clubs, but also is among the districts with the least corporate clubs (just 16% of their clubs are not open to everyone, 7th lowest rate).
I love the idea of helping clubs as soon as they drop below 20, though in some districts, that’s most of their clubs, and they don’t have enough people to help. And corporate clubs sometimes refuse outside help, or are really tough to help due to access limitations.
Corporate clubs are a mixed blessing — easy come, easy go. They’re often easy to charter, and they can fall apart just as easily.
Mike and all.
Our District (27) is perhaps the dead opposite of D71 in that nearly 80 percent of our clubs are Corporate (includes government agencies) rather than community clubs, even though quite a few of the Corporate clubs also allow non-corporate members from other residents in their building, nearby corporations etc. But we AGREE that doing something at the sub-20 inflection point is important, necessary, and in everyone’s best interest. We (Past District LGM, now DG, Paul White) created a named program called “Ambassadors” who performed coach-like functions for clubs below 20 if a club requested such help. There was of course no TMI-level credit for such roles, but we did try other forms of recognition in our Hall of Fame at District Conference etc.
There were not a lot of participants, but where this help was used, we saw clubs turn around and grow again.
We also decided several years ago to reward member (count) retention under a contest we call “March Madness” which makes awards to clubs who maintain OR increase membership during this time period. We don’t expect a static list of names, but if they start with 22 members, they get an award if they have 22 or more members at the end of the period.