The health of your ham radio or other club can be measured by member awareness of, agreement about and personal involvement in the club’s goals and activities. Here’s how to build participation in a healthier club.

People become members of a ham radio club for many reasons. For most, membership means supporting the hobby, meeting people with similar interests and having fun. For some, membership means pursuing their own interests with the support of others. Typically, however, most members do not participate much.

My local radio club has around 150 members. If you want to meet them, show up at one of the semi-annual flea markets. They do. Beyond that, participation is limited. Around 10-20 come to regular meetings. A similar number use the club’s resources or take part in special events. Is this good or bad? I don’t know. It’s pretty typical of a lot of clubs.

If you are involved in a club, you might be thinking about ways to build participation. To participate means to take part or join in something. The first question to build participation is to understand what exactly you are asking members to do, to take part in. The ARRL has published a great article called Tips and Tonics for a Healthier Radio Club. Read it, and then make up your list of the things you think could motivate your members to participate more.

Next, consider that there are different degrees of participation. Many factors such as skills and capabilities, age, health, family, work and other competing interests influence degree of participation, particularly the amount of time available. Most hams (75%) spend less than 10 yours a week on their hobby. Half spend less than 5 hours per week. Most of this time is “on air”. To build participation, you are competing for a limited amount of your members’ time.

A reasonable set of stretch goals to build participation would be 75% passive and 25% active participation. The table below outlines the types of activities you might expect from your members as either passive or active participants.

 

Passive Participation	Active Participation
Be aware of the club’s goals and activities Let the leaders know about your interests and desires	Be a club leader or officer Communicate club goals and activities to members
Attend general meetings	Organize and conduct general meetings
Attend events	Organize and conduct events
Use club services	Provide club services
Use club resources	Build and maintain club resources
Pursue and talk about your special interests with other members	Organize and conduct special interest activates with other members
Collaborate with other organizations and groups	Liaise with and represent club to other organizations
Tell people about the club and ham radio Encourage new hams and new members Develop new skills and capabilities	Promote the club and ham radio Provide education and training Build and use learning resources

Consider this table as a checklist to measure and build participation. The more boxes you can check, the better.

Build Participation – Do Your Homework

Here are some tips to consider as you design a plan to build participation.

• Do a member survey. Find out what your members think about the current activities and what alternatives might be more more attractive. Find out what your members think about the club’s culture and leadership, and how it might be improved. Doing a simple member survey is easy and free. Just use Google Forms. Anyone with a Google account can set up a survey in Google Forms. E-mail it to members, and automatically collect responses. This is so incredibly easy it is almost beyond belief. The hardest part is writing good questions.
• Gear your web site towards participation. Many ham radio and other club web sites look like they were designed in the “stone ages”. In terms of Internet time, they were. A bunch of static web pages with out-of-date content just doesn’t cut it anymore. Give your members the opportunity to participate online any way, any where, any time. This means blogs and comments for a start. Use online conversation to build participation. Make sure your web site is responsive to smart phones and tablets, especially if you want to build participation with younger members. A good place to start might be to discover and use WordPress.
• Identify and remove barriers to participation. In your survey or conversations, find out what turns your members off and reduces participation. And then do something positive about these obstacles. This is hard work because it often involves personalities and politics.

Build Participation – Take Action

To sum up, here are three concrete recommendations to build participation in your radio or other club.

1. Communicate Opportunities for Participation. Club leaders should ensure that members (and potential members) are aware of the opportunities. Do this through the web site, social media and conversation, either on air or especially in person. This is awareness.
2. Invite their Participation. Ask them, especially directly and in person. Describe the benefits of their participation to them individually, to the club and its members, and to the community. Ask them to invite others. This is call to action.
3. Ensure a welcoming and positive club culture. Bend over backwards to make sure that participation provides a good experience. If you have some personality disputes, establish and enforce a Code of Conduct. As a leader, invite, listen to and act on feedback. Turn negatives into opportunities for improvement. When all else fails, discourage members who won’t follow the Code of Conduct. This is the essence of leadership.

As a final thought about your efforts to build participation, if you don’t do #3, you won’t get much success out of #1 and #2. It’s a package deal.