In response to your letter on our squadron's success with Boat Smart and membership, I have outlined some of what we feel were important steps that our squadron took.

First of all, we had to get the entire squadron behind this new concept of a shorter course. Admittedly, even my husband (then Commander) was not in favor of the short class when our SEO announced what his plan was. Next, we had to commit to a rather aggressive schedule as we planned to put on 10 Boat Smart classes last year. We also gave students a choice of class format. These were all day Saturday or four evening (2 per week) classes. The formats were staggered every other month, however the Saturday class appears to be the preferred format.

Next my husband, being retired, was our squadron contact for class information. He spoke with about 80% of all students prior to their coming to a Boat Smart class and would spend a great deal of time with each caller. He would talk with them as long as he felt they wanted to listen about our education, meetings, outings and the members. By the time the students got to the class they had some idea of what USPS is all about. Then the day or evening of the class, I, as Commander, would talk to the class in depth about our education and activities. I would try to show so much excitement about USPS that they had to be interested.

We also had several members in attendance at each class, who would spend as much time with the students as possible helping them with marlinspike or other questions and talking up our squadron. Our membership committee was active in putting together packages with all the information possible about USPS as an organization, education, class descriptions, a sample of our newsletter and helpful information from National Safe Boating material. Also included were discount memberships to Boat/US, information on reliable repair facilities and anything else we could thought would be helpful to a less experienced boater.

I feel our success was the effort of all our working members and the enthusiasm that was shown at the classes. The most important thing is making the prospective member feel like you are having such a great time with USPS that they will be missing out if they don't join.

I hope this is of some help.

Sincerely

P/C Joy H. McGraw, P

Note: Thank you for sharing your success in recruiting new members.
National Membership Committee