Koi Clubs and members

[joe bauer]

Quote: Originally Posted by KoiCop Another troublemaking post Newt/Joe_Bauer? This time I refuse to bite. Hopefully, others are tired of your games, too, and will ignore this trap!

you are being negative and mucking up the board. if you don't like it here, why not go somewhere else?

[koiczar]

Let's not start this crap again - It's beginning to sound like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarhty for cripse sake!!

[jbolding]

I have seen this banter on several threads, and I am afraid I don't understand. If this is some stupid trick please stop.

[Tom C]

The reason for this post was to find ways to bring more people to our local club meeting and have them come back and have the club grow. The holiday party that they just had on had 4 members show up to it. That's a bummer if you ask me. The host spent a lot of time and money to get ready for this meeting.

Our club has raffles and food at every meeting hoping this will help bring people to the meeting. Most of the time if you get $10 worth of raffle tickets you can walk out with $100.00 + worth of pond products. This is do to the low turn out at some of the meetings. I would love to see the club make it, but I guess it's up to the members for it to make it. I don't get to go to many meeting because of other things going on. It does seem some house bring more people to the meeting then other based on the ponds at the houses.

Quote: the main problem for me is club politics in the form of cliques. a group from within the club decide what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, and then they become judgemental and exclusive.

I don't know why Joe heard crap on this post. I have been to a few club meeting of other clubs and have seen this. I think it's something we all have to think about when we have people coming out to meetings.

Thanks for all the post on this thread. I hope it will help others also understand what we can do to help bring people to club meetings.

[Ryan S.]

Less meetings for those clubs with lower turnouts. A lot of people only want to do this a couple times a year, so only have a couple meetings planed, greater turnout at those meetings.

[MCA]

IMHO two major reasons:

• lack of focus
• lack of planned educational program over 2 or more years

On point one, how many koi clubs are really that? If you the club name, local, and bylaws focus on koi...how many folks in the club have koi ponds (as opposed to ponds with koi)? It is all too easy for the very small koi keeping hobby to drown in water gardening. If a club is supposed to be a koi club, then stay on track.

Point two has a synergy with point one. If the club plans and implements a REAL education program (what are koi, why isn't a koi pond a water garden, how to do I measure and maintain the water quality, how and why to QT,,,,etc.) it retain the koi kichi and attract like minded folks.

Our club has ~200 members and someone said...we need more members. One of our few koi kichi members said....no we need more koi keepers to do more work in the club.

OK, that is my morning rant....NEXT!

[Tom C]

Quote: Our club has ~200 members

MCA how many of the 200 members show up to meetings?

[MCA]

Attendees average anywhere from 20 to 65 depending on weather, location..etc. There is no reason for them to come without interesting programs. There is little reason to drive an hour each way only to drink a coke and leave.

Our new VP is trying to change this trend. In our club, the VP is the program chair. So for the January meeting one of the things happening is a panel discussion on koi pond filteration. I am one of the 4-5 panelists. Each of us will do a brief presentation and then we have a discussion. There are the other panelists are from the landscaping/developer community. It should be....interesting.

[Tom C]

MCA, you guys have a great turn out to the meetings. The club must be doing something right.

I'm with you on all the other info you posted. You have to have a good plan to get people to come out. Keep up the good work with your club.

[JosephandGabby]

There are two koi clubs located within 70 miles of my home. When I built my first pond I was hoping to join one or the other, but for whatever the reason, I didn't. I've purchased quite a few books on koi and spent countless hours on various koi forums so I guess I've learned a lot information simply by hanging around. Aside from getting discount prices at a few local koi dealers, I can't think of a reason why I'd want to join a local koi club when I can ask he experts on these boards a question whenever I need to...

- Joseph