POMPANO BEACH POWER SQUADRON
I am replying to a letter from R/C Patricia Schultz, N, requesting that I tell you of the things we do to increase our membership.
We have had a banner year at the Pompano Beach Power Squadron. We graduated over 550 students in our Public Boating Courses. Out of that we added over 55 new members to our roster!
We start out by doing advertising on roads, public parks, boat shows and festivals. We get interested people to sign their names and phone numbers, and we call them before the next course starts and invite them to attend. We teach four of these classes per year.
While our classes are going on, our proctors educate the students on who and what USPS is, and particularly what our squadron can provide for them, if they become members. As an example, we tell the students what fun we had on one of our recent Sunday afternoon raft-ups or weekend rendezvous. We usually have at least one of each every month. We invite students to join us any time they wish. We also show videos of our raft-ups and rendezvous. This makes them feel comfortable with us, shows them that we have many good times together and makes it easy to sign them up for membership at graduation.
We also promote our advanced courses and that helps build interest and membership.
We have an active Member Involvement Committee and we invite students and graduates to come to evening "coffee hours" where we explain how USPS works and the benefits it brings to members. We try to involve our new members in our activities, which allows us to keep more of our members for many years.
I have described our membership efforts as I see them. If I may be of any further assistance, don't hesitate to let me know.
Sincerely,
Cdr Don Cardi,P