Why this group? (and replies encouraged)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Terri O'Connell on July 11, 2009 at 10:28pm

Deason,

I think this group is a great idea. Plus, you are making that large step forward that the societies need to do and that is get online. Open up to the fact that social networking is a part of our future. I think that will bring them a lot more members. I will say that the reason I joined NEGS is because they made it so simple through their facebook group. I had been thinking about joining anyway, one day I was online and I was just able to click through the joining process very easily. I feel that if our local societies did this and had more info online there would be more members.

I hope that through this site, there will be lots of learnings for both sides.

Terri

Permalink Reply by Deason Hunt on July 12, 2009 at 9:23am

Terri,
Some good ideas you added here. Keep 'em coming. :-)

Terri O'Connell said:

Deason,

I think this group is a great idea. Plus, you are making that large step forward that the societies need to do and that is get online. Open up to the fact that social networking is a part of our future. I think that will bring them a lot more members. I will say that the reason I joined NEGS is because they made it so simple through their facebook group. I had been thinking about joining anyway, one day I was online and I was just able to click through the joining process very easily. I feel that if our local societies did this and had more info online there would be more members.

I hope that through this site, there will be lots of learnings for both sides.

Terri

Permalink Reply by Terri O'Connell on July 14, 2009 at 9:40am

Deason,

We also need to get all of our societies blogging about what is going on the society and their upcoming events. Randy Seaver at Genea Musings does a great job at this, i believe he said on his interview with Lisa Louise Cook that he gets about 1,000 hits a day. Imagine what that can do for a local society. I think having the local societies spend some time going over his blog to see what is working would be a good foot forward.

Permalink Reply by Deason Hunt on July 14, 2009 at 8:01pm

Great idea, Terri. Randy is an inspiration in so many ways in genealogy.

Permalink Reply by Glenn Roy Browne on August 10, 2009 at 1:10pm

I have no easy answers and can only relate to our own struggle. I live in Northern Minnesota. Our Kittson County is in the extreme Northwest corner of the state. The population has been thinning out for the last 30 or more years and is now below 4,000. On the other side of the coin, we have an excellent Historical Society and Museum. The building was erected in 1973. A year ago we started a Genealogy Association and spread the word. We meet once a month. We have many members in the Historical Society but too few active members. So far we have attracted about 30 members through the use of group email. The membership gets a reminder of each monthly meeting date and time, as well as any interesting developments relative to history and genealogy. We average 8-12 members a meeting. Then we went to ning.com and opened a KITTSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY web page four and a half months ago. We now have 41 members on that. We are trying to spread the word using the group email plus the web page. The strange thing is we have more members on the web page and on the group email that are former residents of the county vs residents. Former residents are more interested in learning about the county and people than the residents. Our goal is to get more people to post family groups on our web page and then invite their family members to join. We have many groups but few family groups. It is like atomic energy, we need the critical mass before we can expand and grow. Another factor that affects attendence is all the summer activites. We get better turnouts when the weather cools down. Our best attended meeting was during one of the coldest days with a 50 below windchill. We feel we are on the right path towards expansion but only time will prove if that is true. Visit us by going to Ning.com and search for us.

Permalink Reply by Barbara LaClair on November 5, 2009 at 10:09am

Deason,

Thanks for starting this group --- it is great to have a forum to discuss that challenges that most genealogy societies are currently facing.

In our case (the Topeka Genealogical Society) we have experienced an aging less-active membership and declining membership numbers for the past serveral years. For about the last 2 years, we have worked pretty aggressively to turn things around, and we are starting to see some indications of success. One of our biggest problems has been that we have not effectively marketed our organization. Although we have been in business since 1965, many in our community are not aware that we exist or that we offer an impressive genealogical library. We have been setting up an informational display and booth at community festivals where there is a historical theme, we have re-designed and updated our promotional materials to a more current look, and we have added lots of new classes and workshops to our offerings. We are currently working toward a strategic planning process for our Board and other key volunteers, and a re-design of our website to update the appearance and make it more user-friendly.

To survive, I think that we really have to take a hard look at what value we currently offer to prospective members, and what we can do to enhance that value. I think our success in brining in new members will depend on the information, educational opportunities, and service that we offer, and less on the "social club" models of the past. New technology offers us tremendous opportunity to broaden our reach - it is up to us to figure out how to harness that opportunity.