<VV> Membership

[Kenneth Schifftner]

As many a good salesman can tell you, know your “market”, know your “product".  With CORSA, it seems that we think our market is primarily existing members.  Surely it is but the most important market that determines the future of CORSA is non-members, fence sitters, or chapter members who don’t belong to CORSA.

We schedule and conduct events (and pour a lot of effort into those events) mainly for existing members.  Though we know many possible future members work, we tend to conduct Convention events during the week.  Do we expect interested non-members to take the day off?  Not likely.  If we understand our market, wouldn’t a special evening or public Saturday event be better?

Why not (maybe) have an advertised "open house" on one early evening of a Convention week…do the newbie thing and let the local Press know about it? 

The other factor is “product”…touched on by other VV posts.  Just what is CORSA “selling”?  What do we offer?  IMHO, what CORSA offers is the tying together (if it wants to) the activities of the Chapters, advertising (and insuring) activities, and disseminating valuable historic and technical information to members.  Plus there are the friendships…many of which last for decades in spite of some disagreements. CORSA is an organization of people with at least one common interest, the Corvair. Why not have articles on specific Chapter notables…tech folks, founding people, movers/drivers…or just all around nice folks?

Years ago a small bulletin was produced that extolled the virtues of Corvair ownership and CORSA. Maybe it is time to update that and schedule our events to target the real market, future members.



Ken Schifftner
NJACE
CORSA
SDCC