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Archiver > APG > 1999-12 > 0944571054


From: "Amy Johnson Crow" <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Conference vs. membership
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 07:50:54 -0500


I'd like to second Mic's observation that conference attendance is down. Not
only is it down at national and regional conferences, but also at local
meetings. The only time that attendance rises for local meetings is when the
society scrapes up enough to bring in a regional or national speaker. There
might be a coat-tail effect for a month or so afterward, but then the
attendance dies back to its original level.

To further the observation, membership in genealogical societies is down (at
least in the ones I know about). The number of people who say they are into
genealogy is up, yet membership in societies is down. Where are all of these
new people going?

When speaking with new genealogists, I ask them if they belong to any
genealogical societies. Most do not. A surprising majority of them did not
even know that they exist. (Most new genealogists that I talk to also do not
know about APG or BCG, let alone what the initials stand for.)

They do not attend conferences for two reasons -- 1) they did not know about
them or 2) they believe they are too expensive. Having been involved in the
planning of several state and regional conferences, I know first hand that
there is not a lot that can be done to lower the cost to attendees and still
put on a quality program with all the bells and whistles that attendees have
come to expect (like a printed syllabus, for example).

However, there is something we can do about the first reason. It is called
marketing.

Yes, the societies and the conferences have ads in their newsletters and
sometimes in national genealogical publications, but isn't that preaching to
the choir?

Better marketing would also help with the lower membership figures. Its kind
of hard to join a society if you don't know it exists.

Why am I so keen on getting society membership up? Because I believe that
societies open a whole world to the genealogist. There is a tremendous
amount of work being done by societies -- work that major publishing houses
would never tackle. They are also our best resource for knowledge of local
records. They are the ones that can tell you that, yes there was a
courthouse fire in 1875, but all of the land records survived (contrary to
what the county clerk will tell you).

The established foundation of the genealogical community at all levels --
local, state and national -- must find new and better ways of marketing
itself. This will probably include hiring someone with this experience to
get the word out to the mass media.

I do not want this to sound like "us vs. them" ("them" being the big
business genealogy publishers). There is plenty of room for all of us to
work together. But, I firmly believe that if genealogical societies weaken
and fall to the wayside, the world of genealogical research will be much
poorer as a result.

Amy

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Amy Johnson Crow, CG
Reynoldsburg, Ohio

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