Priority - Membership drop

[timmcentee]

As mentioned in this week's issue of President's Corner, we are seeking your feedback on what we can do to increase membership. This is meant to be a brainstorming session, so all ideas are welcome. Even if you have a partial idea, please list since this might encourage someone to add to it.

As the board continues to make progress in this area, we will report either in President's Corner or in this thread.

Thanks for taking time to respond.
Tim

[JeremyMadison]

I think that the key to increasing membership is advertising chess itself. Of course, the problem with that is that promoting chess takes money. And from what I understand, IASCA doesn't have the money to use for promoting chess. This is possibly something to look into once we gain our non-profit status, saving some money on postage, to use the money on bringing IASCA into the limelight, even if we just say, advertise a tournament in a local newspaper or something like that, it will increase membership. Besides that, it would draw people in to watch some games if tournaments were advertised. Then the people who watched the tourney will tell people about it and may get more people involved, increasing membership even more. In my opinion, the bottom line is you have to spend money to make money, or in this case, you have to play chess to... make chess? You get the point.

[HankAnzis]

Hi,
There are 2 main benefits of being a IASCA member,
1) Being able to play in state tournaments
2) Receiving the magazine.

I would consider giving overruns of the magazine as samples to USCF members in the state that are not IASCA members or to scholastic chess clubs in the state to see if you can entice memberships.

I would also consider giving memberships to winners of the beginner opens, scholastic events, and non-USCF rated tournaments in the state.

You are on the right track in trying to increase tournament participation. That will give you the membership boost you are looking for.

[rustydavis]

Publicity, publicity, publicity! Let people know about the events. The IASCA should add the responsibility of media relations to a current board member or create a new position that would handle all press releases. The TLA's provide all of the information needed and a template can be setup to create the actual press releases. The media outlet's contact info doesn't change, so we could increase membership by increasing exposure. After the event is completed, the tournament director should send the results and write up a small article with the who, what, when, where, and whys and a post-event press release should be sent out also.

Make chess fun for kids. This is silly, but we could get a championship belt like pro wrestling. Imagine how many kids would want that belt whenn the 1st grade champ shows up to show-and-tell with a championship belt and explains he won it playing chess. That could get interest peaked in children.

We could also be sending out informational fliers to, or visit, schools announcing upcoming events and inquiring about a school chess club. I'm sure there are quite a few schools with chess clubs, but there is rarely more than 12 teams at the high school team championship. Is that because they don't know or don't care?

We could inquire to the city and school libraries if they would like to become members of the IASCA, the benefit of doing so is helping to promote chess by receiving the quarterly En Passant for the library. Maybe even throw in a free chess set and board for the library so visitors can play with the set in the library.

[stullchess]

Greetings All,

I know that this is an old post but was wondering who the focus for membership growth is aimed at: adults, kids or both?

About the kids, there are already numerous "state" tournaments for them as non-members. I don't really see the selling point for them or their parents. Plus with chess in Iowa being so small and compared to other states, children memberships to a state association are very few, mainly only by some of the top players.

When states "give memberships to winners of the beginner opens, scholastic events, and non-USCF rated tournaments in the state" that are scholatic the only thing it really does is add those winners to the roll. It does encourage other children or their parents that becoming a member of the ISCA is worthwile for them. How many kids would be members of the USCF if it wasn't a requirement for rated state tournaments, etc.? I believe the numbers would be down.

Could Iowa make it manditory for kids to be members to play in most or all of the scholastic state events? Sure, but would it help the growth of scholastic chess in the state? I do not believe so.

Just a few of my thoughts on the subject.

Joe

[adwyatt]

It's more than obvious why membership is so low, and why the IASCA is having immense trouble recruiting new players. Iowa chess plaeyrs being what they are, though, the Queen is hanging in the middle of the board and no knows it.

The glaring problem is that the IASCA doesn't have any tournaments for players to compete in! Yes, there are plenty of scholastic and girls' events, but virtually nothing for adults. And guess what? (This is going to be a shock, so I hope you're sitting down while you're reading this.) Guess what scholastic girls and boys grow up to be? Adults. And if there are no adult tournaments for them to play in, how long do you think they're going to keep up their membership?

Now, I don't expect most chessplayers to understand this. They can calculate fifteen trees of analysis fifty moves deep on the board, but they can't see what's right in front of their face. But just for the fun of it, try an experiment. Try having an adult tournament more than once every millenium. How about once a decade? You might be able to sign up one or two new members, assuming your collective intelligence can grasp that reality.

[HankAnzis]

adwyatt said:

The glaring problem is that the IASCA doesn't have any tournaments for players to compete in! Yes, there are plenty of scholastic and girls' events, but virtually nothing for adults.
.....
But just for the fun of it, try an experiment. Try having an adult tournament more than once every millenium. How about once a decade? You might be able to sign up one or two new members, assuming your collective intelligence can grasp that reality.

IASCA has taken a big hit in losing two of the more active TDs in 2006. I hope you can get to the Okoblji tournament on Saturday. If it goes well, it will probably be a fixture on the 'tour'.

[John B. Flores]

I am new to Iowa; originally from Texas and arrived to Iowa by way of Minnesota. Those of you who have made it to the Okiboji tournaments that last two Winters may remember me.

Currently, I am living in Sibley but may move to Sheldon in the future. I have long term solution -- chess scholarships. In the coming month I hope to approach Northwest Community College in Sheldon about the prospects about starting a chess scholarship program at the college.

My dream is to get schools to implement chess as part of their curriculum. Accordingly, I am going to be talking with K-12 schools and colleges to promote chess. I invite those who would like to help with this effort to please contact me.

BTW, I am a local TD so I am willing to travel (within reason and on some occassions beyond) to assist with running tournaments.

-John

[runewell]

Hi this is Rich Newell. My involvement in chess has been extremely casual and focused on taking my son Ryan to events. Hank & I had a chance to chat at the recent grade level tournament. I moved here from St. Paul 3 1/2 years ago (www.schoolchess.org) and I first of all want to thank Hank for his involvement in tourneys which as far as I can tell has been a tremendous boost for Iowa chess. I'm sure many others have been involved also; Tim, Roger, Jim, Ben and others.

I think publicity is one key. I can't go to a tournament if I don't know about it. The website is very helpful for those of us who ARE interested. But at least having fliers sent to schools would be a good idea. I haven't seen Ben involved this year at Jordan Creek (where Ryan attends) and as a result I'm not sure there was any publicity sent to the students about the tournament.

Having someone to help lead the group is also a way to foster involvement. I appreciate the time and effort Ben has spent in Des Moines helping out at various schools.

I'm a bridge player first. For me chess player is a distant second, but I can relate to the way bridge clubs and bridge tournaments occur. When people come to a tournament it's not unusual for someone sponsoring a tournament to dsitribute fliers to others who can bring them back to each hometown. If someone handed me 20-30 fliers about an upcoming event, I could give them to Ryan and he could make sure that everyone in the chess club at least finds out. Leaving fliers at chess tournaments is obviously a good idea, but that will only cater to people that find their way to one, and not to the newcomer.

The grade level tournament and the team tournament always seem to be very well attended. Why not have another grade level tournament later in the year if it's so popular? However I don't make it out to every tournament so there might already be other wildly popular tournaments and I don't get out to them all.

In one session of bridge, you will usually play 24-28 hands over the course of 3 hours and change. Some events have you play with a wide field of experience levels; other events are bracketed so that you play with people of similiar experience levels.

Some of the popularity of grade level tournaments might be that 4th graders know they won't have to play 6th graders, and so on. I recall going to a Marshalltown event with 6 quads and as a newcomer to chess I found myself playing with an appropriate skill level which was nice. In contrast to Cychess (which is a nice event) but you can find yourself playing against a 900 and a 1900 in the same event.

How about this: a scholastic quad? Match up rated kids into groups of 5 regardless of age. As for the unrated, bunch them up according to age. This would keep the challenge for rated players consistent and would give the unrated players a chance to win something outright.

I let my chess membership expire. I simply wasn't using it enough. As a parent, I did appreciate that Hank wanted to cater to the chess-playing parent also, even if the games were for fun. I would like to play some rated games, but only when I'm heading somewhere on my son's behalf. Maybe G/30 scholastic games could be run alongside G/10 parent games. Some events look possible, but if I jump into a 1600 section it may run longer or an open event might be spread across two days.

Just some thoughts...