Ten thousand new members in 2013 - congratulations!

[gordy]

Well done to the CTC team.
Keep up the good work.

Here's to an even better 2014.

[robgul]

.... ever the cynic ... 10,000 new members, that's good ... but how many left the fold? - and the net figure for gain/loss is .......

Rob

[Mick F]

10,000 for this year?
Is that 10,000 per year?

Somehow I smell a rat.

[Si]

It reads "Nearly 10,000 new members joined us throughout the year,"...so it's for this year.
And while I'm sure that a good number left for a whole raft of reasons, if we've taken on almost 10,000* in a year then we'd have had to do something badly wrong not to come out significantly ahead. anyway, at some point we will see the overall total of members* published and so can then have a good argument as to whether they are real members and do affiliates and life members count, etc.

[Mick F]

10,000 a year seems like a bit suspect to me as a statistic. There must be more to it than that.

If in 2013 we had 10,000 new members at £40 each, that would be an income of £400,000 per annum - and if 2013 is typical, that would mean 100,000 new members in the last ten years at an income of £4M.

In that ten years, we'd have 100,000 new members plus the one's who are still members, so maybe a million members at any one time?

Is that correct?

[Si]

As said, it's for this year not per year, plus it won't have been @£40 per member!

Likewise it probably wasn't all individual members - quite a few groups may have been looking for insurance and so affiliated to the CTC.

As for why so many...well I'd guess a combination of increased numbers cycling, and possibly, with more on cycle related campaigning in the news, people still recognise the CTC as a major player and so have decided to support it.

[thirdcrank]

Whoa!

This may be a place where scepticism shading into cynicism is more prevalent than sycophancy but this is edging towards questioning the integrity of whoever prepared the press release.

Even if there's been absolutely no net increase in membership, but if 10K grumpy old gits have been replaced with the same number of younger riders, still fresh-faced and fired with youthful enthusiasm, that might be no bad thing.

[NUKe]

Well done to the membership team.

I often find it strange when people use the board to complain that the membership isn't worth it and they're not paying it. Just the hosting of this forum is worth the £40 per year. I think the CTC does a great job campaigning.

Now that Chris Boardman has returned from the Dark side of racing. His campaigning for normal cycling and riding a bike in normal Clothes on TV is the icon we need. We need him as the next president.

[Si]

Even if there's been absolutely no net increase in membership, but if 10K grumpy old gits have been replaced with the same number of younger riders, still fresh-faced and fired with youthful enthusiasm, that might be no bad thing.

How do you know that they've not been replaced with a different 10K grumpy old gits?

But yes, however one looks at it, such an increase in recruitment must be a positive thing, congrats to the (now in-house) membership dept from me also.

[thirdcrank]

.... How do you know that they've not been replaced with a different 10K grumpy old gits? ....

I don't know: like much of the rest of what's been posted, it's speculation. We've no idea, for example, how many people were in the throes of trying to renew but getting nowhere. We've had posts from people in that sort of situation and there's no way of knowing if they were all one-offs or symptomatic of a wider problem. (I'm not suggesting that 10K people were affected by this.) Whatever, I'm prepared to bet that potential members are more quickly deterred by poor admin at point of application than are committed, existing members struggling to renew. Lots of people, especially outsiders who don't feel welcome, simply walk away without telling the organisation concerned, although they may broadcast it to their facebook contacts etc.

I presume that it's that type of thing which led to the decision to stop outsourcing. I'll suggest that efficient and friendly service in this connection is as likely to boost and retain membership as any amount of promotion through advertising etc.

No doubt a fuller picture will emerge later. I'd reiterate that I'd be slow to imply that anybody involved in publicising this was acting in bad faith.

[robgul]

Why are we beating about the bush here? - someone at CTC HQ needs to post two numbers here :

1 - number of members at 31 December 2012,

2 - number of members at 31 December 2013

- making sure of course that the measurement criteria are the same. Simples.

Rob

[TonyR]

Why are we beating about the bush here? - someone at CTC HQ needs to post two numbers here :

1 - number of members at 31 December 2012,

2 - number of members at 31 December 2013

- making sure of course that the measurement criteria are the same.

Rob

Ah, not only are the HQ expected to move mountains, they are expected to be prescient too!

[robgul]

Why are we beating about the bush here? - someone at CTC HQ needs to post two numbers here :

1 - number of members at 31 December 2012,

2 - number of members at 31 December 2013

- making sure of course that the measurement criteria are the same.

Rob

Ah, not only are the HQ expected to move mountains, they are expected to be prescient too!

Very droll - one assumes that CTC HQ has packed up for the hols and therefore the year ... surely the laser display counting unit in the membership department would have the numbers in real-time . . . .

Rob

[mjr]

So still fewer than British Cycling then?

[Mick F]

Why are we beating about the bush here? - someone at CTC HQ needs to post two numbers here :

1 - number of members at 31 December 2012,

2 - number of members at 31 December 2013

- making sure of course that the measurement criteria are the same. Simples.

Rob

+1