{"id":748,"date":"2011-09-20T14:53:44","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T19:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/?p=748"},"modified":"2012-04-20T00:02:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T05:02:14","slug":"districts-with-no-club-loss-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/20\/districts-with-no-club-loss-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Districts with NO club loss?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We make a big deal about districts that build 30-40 or more new clubs in a year, but what about districts that lost zero clubs?\u00a0 I think that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment.\u00a0 And in 2010-11, we had just one district achieve that — D49 (Hawaii)<\/strong>.\u00a0 They started the year with 64 clubs, added one new club in October 2010, and renewed every single one of those 65 clubs, 100% retention!<\/p>\n

The year before (2009-10), just one district did it as well, D33 (central California and southern Nevada)<\/strong>, but they lost 4 clubs this year.\u00a0 (Here is my post<\/a> on this topic a year ago.)<\/p>\n

What’s rather interesting is that of the three districts presented with the President’s Extension award last month (August 2011) in Las Vegas (for the largest net club increase), they had some rather dismal retention rates.\u00a0 They were closing clubs in large numbers.\u00a0 The full report is here: http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/NoClubLoss.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

D82 (India and Sri Lanka<\/strong>, which just spun off a new D41), built 71 new clubs (in 64 areas) last year for a net gain of 49 clubs, putting them on top of all other districts for the fourth year in a row — but lost 22 clubs along the way, for a rather dismal club retention rate of just 90.2%.<\/p>\n

D79 (Middle East<\/strong>, which\u00a0 just spun off a new D20) built an amazing 74 new clubs last year (in 77 areas), raising them to #2 in the world and President’s Distinguished — but at the same time, closed 26 clubs, producing a club retention rate of just 91.3% (17th from the bottom).<\/p>\n

D85 (China)<\/strong> built 44 new clubs (slackers! just kidding!) in 41 areas, but closed just 8, for a decent retention rate of 95.0% (about the middle of all the districts).<\/p>\n

At the other end of the spectrum, we have 10 districts in the 87-90% club retention range.\u00a0 Some of them appear to be in economically depressed areas, like Michigan, Tennessee, and Arkansas, but others (Singapore, Massachusetts) are less easy to explain.\u00a0 These districts closed more clubs than they started, they shrank.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Member retention<\/strong> is something a lot of people focus on, and rightly so.\u00a0 The same web page above also gives an estimate of the member retention by district, with a range from 66% to 90%.<\/p>\n

What is different about these districts that appear to retain nearly all their members?\u00a0 The five with the highest member retention rates are in overseas districts, starting with D76 (Japan)<\/strong>.\u00a0 Yet the #6 district is D16 (Oklahoma)<\/strong> at 81%, so it seems clear that “mature markets” are capable of retaining members too!<\/p>\n

The districts with poorer retention are scattered around the country; the lowest non-U.S. district is D67 (Taiwan) with 72.5%.\u00a0 (BTW, club retention and member retention do not appear to be closely coupled.)<\/p>\n

Is there a lesson here?<\/strong>\u00a0 I don’t think districts have much influence over membership retention.\u00a0 But, they do have a lot of influence over club retention by providing motivated and trained coaches to clubs that need them, and by helping clubs even before they get to the threatened level that qualifies them for a coach.<\/p>\n

Some districts just don’t participate in the coaching program; one district has NO coaches currently appointed, despite dozens of clubs that qualify for a coach.<\/p>\n

Existing district recognition is focused on net club growth, which is a combination of retaining clubs as well as growing new ones.\u00a0 By creating recognition for districts based on club retention, we’ll help our district leaders focus on helping those struggling clubs, more than just calling them up on the phone and asking for their dues payments.<\/p>\n

We also need to learn from the districts that are doing well.\u00a0 Interviews and explanations of what worked well could be shared with other districts, helping spread best practices world-wide.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we could even have an award for the district that has the most successful club coaches!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We make a big deal about districts that build 30-40 or more new clubs in a year, but what about districts that lost zero clubs?\u00a0 I think that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment.\u00a0 And in 2010-11, we had just one district achieve that — D49 (Hawaii).\u00a0 They started the year with 64 clubs, added one new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}