by jcd » Sat Feb 04, 2017 3:42 pm
SCCA National Convention 19-21 January 2017 – Justin Harbour
The meetings I attended can be broken down into three categories: National meetings, regional communications, and regional leadership.
The first of the national meetings consisted of a new RE/Board member introduction. They discussed the size of the SCCA (46k members mostly divided between club racing and solo), the success of the club keeping members after their first year, and the age of the average member (median age around 46). All clubs should have a charter and by-laws as part of being a 501(c)(4). The second national meeting was the Annual meeting. The SCCA recognizes that it is competing against other agile companies. SCCA Pro Inc. lost a lot of money last year and has plans to turn that around in 2017. The SCCA Foundation (the charitable arm of the SCCA) supports education and safety programs; they asked that clubs consider the foundation when choosing charities. The next meeting was the solo town hall. They mentioned that Regional Stewards are now called Solo Development Coordinators, to more closely match their duties. The solo rulebook will no longer be printed; it will be available via PDF or independent publisher through Amazon. There were also discussions on the protests at nationals and some of the proposed new rules that came from that (octane limit of 95 and them opening up engine management, and boost, for Street Touring). The lack of clarity in responses from advisory committees to letters from the membership was also discussed. The final meeting of this type was the SCCA BOD meeting. In it we discussed the CEO vacancy, the club’s strategic plan, the turn-around of SCCA Pro Inc. and providing more detailed information at the next Annual Meeting.
I attended 5 meetings on electronic communication, social media marketing, event marketing, PR for regional events, and e-mail marketing. Each provided detailed information about individual tools and methods for getting our message out. For e-mail we they discussed methods for getting the messages opened and clicked-through (such as providing the result links via e-mail), which would decrease the chances of the messages getting flagged as spam. Communication should focus on the fun, but also needs to have a purpose, like a call to action or tell a story to garner interest. All communications need to link back to the website, which should be easy to navigate and provided links to events and contact information. Advertising can be useful as it can be tracked to determine if it was of value. The main office hosts Instagram and Twitter accounts, which require near constant effort to keep fresh, so we should probably avoid those. For marketing they emphasized t-shirts (walking billboard) for specific events, incentive programs (e.g. 8 events for the price of 6), cross posting of upcoming events, and maybe an accessible event guide on the website to capture e-mail addresses. There was also mention of VIP level perks for work, suggestion of winter league activities (indoor karting).
The third group of meetings consisted of 6 meetings and discussed leadership and methods of recruiting and keeping volunteers. They suggested keeping a focus on having fun, the appeal of the events, and the purpose of keeping the club strong though diversification/delegation. There was a lot of focus on leadership and delegation, that it’s good to ask people to take some ownership of a task they seem interested in. There was discussion on the new waivers, so we’ll need to make certain we’re using those. Don’t focus all the incentives on gaining new members, it’s still cheaper to retain current members, so look for ways to say “thanks” without blowing the bank on it. We do need to focus heavily on membership, such as making sure new participants are aware of the benefits of SCCA and the other local regions, having a novice chair that helps look after the new members and attempts to compile a list of e-mail addresses.
There were many other discussions and points, I have my notes per session in word file and the SCCA office has said it will post most, if not all, of the power point presentations.
https://www.scca.com/articles/2005028-s ... al-meeting" target="_blank
SCCA National Convention 19-21 January 2017 – Justin Harbour
The meetings I attended can be broken down into three categories: National meetings, regional communications, and regional leadership.
The first of the national meetings consisted of a new RE/Board member introduction. They discussed the size of the SCCA (46k members mostly divided between club racing and solo), the success of the club keeping members after their first year, and the age of the average member (median age around 46). All clubs should have a charter and by-laws as part of being a 501(c)(4). The second national meeting was the Annual meeting. The SCCA recognizes that it is competing against other agile companies. SCCA Pro Inc. lost a lot of money last year and has plans to turn that around in 2017. The SCCA Foundation (the charitable arm of the SCCA) supports education and safety programs; they asked that clubs consider the foundation when choosing charities. The next meeting was the solo town hall. They mentioned that Regional Stewards are now called Solo Development Coordinators, to more closely match their duties. The solo rulebook will no longer be printed; it will be available via PDF or independent publisher through Amazon. There were also discussions on the protests at nationals and some of the proposed new rules that came from that (octane limit of 95 and them opening up engine management, and boost, for Street Touring). The lack of clarity in responses from advisory committees to letters from the membership was also discussed. The final meeting of this type was the SCCA BOD meeting. In it we discussed the CEO vacancy, the club’s strategic plan, the turn-around of SCCA Pro Inc. and providing more detailed information at the next Annual Meeting.
I attended 5 meetings on electronic communication, social media marketing, event marketing, PR for regional events, and e-mail marketing. Each provided detailed information about individual tools and methods for getting our message out. For e-mail we they discussed methods for getting the messages opened and clicked-through (such as providing the result links via e-mail), which would decrease the chances of the messages getting flagged as spam. Communication should focus on the fun, but also needs to have a purpose, like a call to action or tell a story to garner interest. All communications need to link back to the website, which should be easy to navigate and provided links to events and contact information. Advertising can be useful as it can be tracked to determine if it was of value. The main office hosts Instagram and Twitter accounts, which require near constant effort to keep fresh, so we should probably avoid those. For marketing they emphasized t-shirts (walking billboard) for specific events, incentive programs (e.g. 8 events for the price of 6), cross posting of upcoming events, and maybe an accessible event guide on the website to capture e-mail addresses. There was also mention of VIP level perks for work, suggestion of winter league activities (indoor karting).
The third group of meetings consisted of 6 meetings and discussed leadership and methods of recruiting and keeping volunteers. They suggested keeping a focus on having fun, the appeal of the events, and the purpose of keeping the club strong though diversification/delegation. There was a lot of focus on leadership and delegation, that it’s good to ask people to take some ownership of a task they seem interested in. There was discussion on the new waivers, so we’ll need to make certain we’re using those. Don’t focus all the incentives on gaining new members, it’s still cheaper to retain current members, so look for ways to say “thanks” without blowing the bank on it. We do need to focus heavily on membership, such as making sure new participants are aware of the benefits of SCCA and the other local regions, having a novice chair that helps look after the new members and attempts to compile a list of e-mail addresses.
There were many other discussions and points, I have my notes per session in word file and the SCCA office has said it will post most, if not all, of the power point presentations.
https://www.scca.com/articles/2005028-scca-national-convention-revs-up-with-annual-meeting" target="_blank
