<VV> 100% CORSA membership requirement

[randy at jrmiles.com]

As the voice of someone who just got back into the hobby, a newbie to a Corvair club (8 months or so), a newbie to <VV> (a month maybe) and a newbie member of CORSA (joined 1-17-08), I have to agree with Richard that our local chapters, while handy as a recruiting tool for CORSA membership, might not achieve the desired result if 100% CORSA membership were required.  

I am not a newbie to Corvairs, I just had a 20 year "cooling off period" (guess you just can't get some things out of your blood).  I have found reading the <VV> strings over the past month or so very insightful.  There is a wealth of knowledge here, and I have seen the e-mail addresses of several of you, with whom I have enjoyed doing business and talking about my project car.  What I am seeing in this string does not surprise me .... Corvair nuts (been one since 10-31-75 so lets not kid ourselves about that) are an independent lot.  None of us like to be told what to do.

Ours is a small club.  The club's Constitution has listed as its No. 1 purpose: "Support the Corsa National Organization."  It also says that "members of the chapter shall be encouraged to be members of CORSA."  Notably, our chapter Constitution initially required CORSA membership and then was amended to "encouraged."  After attending club meetings for 6 months, the reason I joined CORSA is because the big kids had the cool magazine and (not being the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway) I wanted to be able to keep up with the discussions at the meetings.  If I had been told that I was required to join CORSA, I very likely would not have even joined the local chapter because . . . "How dare you tell me what I have to do?"  That would have hurt me as a Corvair owner, it would have hurt the club because they would not have a new member, and it would have hurt CORSA because it would not have a new member.  So, I see the potential for a negative trickle down effect to CORSA should we lose the local chapter flexibility of saying "we aren't going to make you join CORSA, but you might want to think about it."  I thought about it and I did.  It was not about money, it was about being given the opportunity to make my own decision.

I believe that, left to our own devices, those of us who are committed to the Corvair hobby are going to join CORSA anyway.  With that in mind, my newbie opinion (and we all know what those are like) is to focus on recruiting at the local chapter level.  To me, the CORSA chapters should be about promoting comeraderie over these unique little cars, station wagons & FCs.  I don't think that telling potential recruits about a requirement (vs. a reccomendation) to join CORSA is going to help me bring in a lot of new members.  If I can get back into this hobby after 20 years, track down and join a local chapter and end up a CORSA member within a relatively short time frame, there are others like me out there.  Lets go find them. 

Randy Miles
'65 Coupe
CORSA newbie 


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Gebhardt" <rgebhardt at bigfoot.com>
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Subject: <VV> 100% CORSA membership requirement
> Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:25:52 -0600
> 
> 
> Guys, lighten up and consider the following.
> 
> Every convention I attend, I go to the CORSA officers meeting where the
> current state
> of CORSA is discussed. At every one, the major discussion always turns to
> the
> decline in membership and with it, the decline in revenue.
> 
> I have been involved with CORSA and corvairs since the early eighties. I
> am a past president and chief bottle-washer of the North Texas club,
> worked in both the Dallas90 mini and the Dallas95 convention. I am currently
> president of the Music City Club.
> 
> Over the years, this argument has been beaten to death. My philosophy was to
> get
> members at the local level and use that membership to extol the virtues
> of CORSA. We did this by having reports at the August meetings as to
> the convention that was just completed.
> 
> We have members that have never been to a national and probably never
> will. The Communique is a excellent magazine, but to a lot of people,
> not worth the price.
> 
> With the declining membership, to suddenly jump in and decide that all
> local members must be national members will prove to be counter-productive.
> Local members are the major source of national members. To turn some
> person away saying 'you can't join our little club' unless you join the
> national. If you run them off at the local level, the national will never
> see them.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Richard Gebhardt
> Corvanatics, 69Group, NTCA and MCCC and CORSA
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> 
> 
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