Our radio club has recently been going through allot of changes.  From the board and membership, to exploring and searching for ways to encourage new members.
Encouraging new members is one of the most difficult aspects of the changes taking place.
It isn’t so much that there is a lack of new hams, we get around 20 to 30 new certified ham operators a year through our club.  The issue is keeping their attention and offering activities, programs and elmering in the areas they are most interested in.
One of our executive board members, who has been a ham for decades, and is probably one of the more modern guys, explained it fairly simply.
30 years ago, a ham operator would typically have a home station consisting of a tower, beam and HF rig.  He might have a 2 meter rig in his shack or car.  Ham radio activities consisted of maybe some bunny hunts, coffee gatherings, barbecues at the club site, field day and certainly contesting.  there used to be dances, awards nights and club dinners as well.
So an HF radio, antenna (even just a dipole or wire) and a 2M rig of some kind.
Jump ahead 30 years to today.  Almost entirely gone are the tower and beam, everyone has a 50 dollar HT or 6, and modern cars are nearly impossible to put a radio into.
There are digital modes, satellite comms, IRLP, Echolink, microwave, pactor, Dstar, Fusion, DMR, high altitude balloons, APRS, and about 50 more different areas of modern amateur radio to be interested in.
The older fellows, the HF radio, tower beam and maybe a 2M rig guys, are still interested in those things, but many don’t have the tower anymore and might only get on the 2m repeater once or twice a week.  They’re also well behind the technology curve and don’t understand most of the new stuff.  So, this leaves us with who is going to help the new hams who are gung hoe to be a part of the hobby and service, but without allot of help to get them to where they want to go.  The few elmers that are up on the newest tech are, like I say, few in number and spread thin with 20 or 30 new hams a year wanting help and elmering and to be shown the ropes.
The result is that new hams keep their membership in the club for a year, and then don’t renew because the club is not offering them what they need or want and they end up going it alone hoping to learn everything from the internet and figure it out.
Our club has gone from 600 members 30 years ago, to just over 100 today.  And, like I say, the numbers of actual certified operators holding a callsign is not dwindling, in fact, it is probably increasing due to interest in technology and the certification being quite a bit easier, technically than it was 30 years ago.

So the point of writing this is to pick everyones brain on what your clubs do to keep the interest of young, or perhaps not so young, but enthusiastic new hams.
HF and the local 2m/70CM repeater are great, but those are only 2 aspects of what is becoming a very very broad and multi-fascitted hobby.
Being the public relations director, part of my duties are to encourage the hobby and service of amateur radio in the community.  I embrace all the newest stuff and have a fairly good understanding of how it all works.  But how do I keep the new guys coming back and wanting to be a part of this club?

Something we did at our last general monthly meeting was to put up a list of about 20 areas of interest.  We then asked people to write down on sticky notes what their primary and secondary areas of interest were.  I think this is a good start, but we need something perhaps more immediate than that to keep the flood gates closed of new members leaving the club.

All thoughts and opinions welcome and encouraged, and thank you if you do take the time to respond.

73
Colin, V A6BKX