We already discussed this at the board meeting, but....
One thing I have noticed is that the number of people that stay after
the break has plummeted. Door prizes help keep prospective and new
members there after the speaker leaves. Yes, to old hands and to us
"newer" old hands, door prizes are no big deal. But bribery works and
part of getting new members to old member status is keeping them past
the break, since this is when the actual feeling of being part of the
club is fostered -- otherwise they are just attending the lecture and
never really getting to know anyone.
I just don't feel a magazine subscription once or twice a year is the
way to get those new members sticking around for the more social part of
the meeting. Plus, the magazines as door prizes now usually get passed
off to one of the kids in attendance (ask me how I know... ;)
We could invest less than $200 and still have decent door prizes, but we
would need to set a hard budget and someone would have to volunteer to
purchase/order prizes. The lure of the astrobox is that it's easy.
Another option is to get a set of patches off Amazon -- you can get 12
various Apollo mission patches from the Space Shop on Amazon (Kennedy
space center store) for $39.99 with free shipping. That's a cool grand
prize for each month of the year, then we fill it out with the random
stuff we always have on hand.
Just observations and ideas!
Jen
On 2017-02-19 18:26, Paul wrote:
I think I remember who it was who suggested we cancel the door prizes
as being a waste of money.
Under the old system we assigned each board member a month or two out
of the year--we rotated board members--to bring door prizes. The
expectation was that no one would exceed $50 a year.
As I wandered around if I happened to see something that would make a
nice prize I would buy it. NASA coffee mugs when I was last at Cape
Canaveral, for example. Steeply discounted space books from local
clothing stores. It's nice that some of the money might pass through
local retailers.
Are the door prizes a sound investment? What if we just did only one
door prize? What if, instead of back issues, the door prize was the
current astronomy magazine? A regular one year subscription to
"Astronomy" is $43.
To encourage attendance we could have a free drawing, once or twice a
year, limited to all new members over the past year, and award the
winner a one year subscription to Astronomy or Sky & Telescope (their
choice).
Instead of door prizes, $219 would finance a library telescope. I
don't recall--is there a plaque on the Shadle Library telescope:
Donated by the
Spokane Astronomical Society
www.spokaneastronomy.org
I should get a couple of plates stamped for the two new telescopes.
Is there anything else we need on it? Like the year, for example?
Currently telescopes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx points to Elle. I recommend
we modify this to make it point to a list of people who will field
library telescope questions, and that we create a new address:
equipment@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to forward to the equipment manager.
Whoever that is--it isn't listed on our current newsletter.
Nick, under "Resources" you might add a tab for library telescopes.
Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo
--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 2/19/17, jenny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <jenny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Subject: [SAS-BOD] Re: AstroBox
To: sasbod@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, February 19, 2017, 3:24 PM
So $55 a box, which has 5
to 8 items. Enough for at least 1 grand prize
and one other prize for the three meetings a
single box would cover.
Three items are
always a shirt, patch, and art print, so those are
probably our grand prize items. We then flesh
it out with the magazines,
posters, and
other stray goodies we tend to get in.
Broken down, that's less than $20 per
month, takes minimal effort, and
may have a
big wow factor for members/potential members, so I'm
on
board with it.
-Jenny
On
2017-02-19 16:06, Nick Monkman wrote:
>
Hi all,
>
> At the
meeting we discussed the need to improve our door prizes a
bit.
> One idea was a monthly box of
astronomy-themed goodies.
>
> http://www.astrobox.rocks
>
> $219 / year
>
> What do you
think?
