At HamCation [2025 in Orlando], Ken, KN2D, gave [a] presentation on how to increase your club’s member participation. He’s a marketing guy by profession, and it shows.

He does have some great ideas about how to get members more engaged. One of the ideas that I especially liked was asking inactive members why they don’t participate in more club activities. Ken says, “They pay their dues, but that’s all they do. Ask them why they aren’t active in the club and what would what would get them more involved.” We’ve talked about doing a membership survey in our club, but I think that asking these questions of inactive members is simpler and could be just as effective.

Other suggestions included:

• Making sure that your club’s website is attractive and up-to-date. As an example of a good website, he used my club’s website. He especially liked the way that we used a Google calendar to list our events.
• Make good use of social media, including:
  • Complete the entire profile
  • Add a professional profile image
  • Add an eye-catching cover photo
  • Leverage business description & “About” areas
  • Post, post, post. In conjunction with this, he gives a lot of good ideas for what to post.
• Use email to market your club. He’s an email marketing guy, so of course he’d suggest this.
• Host a variety of events, including speakers at monthly meetings, field days (not just the big one in June), contesting, family-oriented events (such as picnics), swap meets, campouts, and game nights.
• Pre and post event PR. There were a whole bunch of good ideas in this category, including:
  • Use press releases to announce club meetings and events.
  • Create a designated PIO (Public Information Officer) position at your club.
  • Don’t expect hams, especially new hams, to find you by osmosis.

Of course, one of my favorites is “Hold licensing classes and give tests.” You really can’t expect your club to grow if you’re not creating new hams. While that’s not the main reason that I teach classes—I just want to help as many people as I can have as much fun with ham radio as I have—it’s an important part of a successful club.

You’ll find these and a lot more good ideas in Ken’s slide deck I’m happy to say that our club is doing much of this already—and it shows. We’re well over 100 members and we’re continuing to grow. If you’re concerned at all about your club, please watch the video and get the slides.

Yesterday, our club—ARROW—held its annual holiday get-together. We had a great turnout, and it was a lot of fun. It’s a really great club, and I’m really happy to be a part of it.

The agenda for yesterday’s meeting included:

• Eat pizza. (The club sprang for pizza and beverages.)
• “Elect” next year’s officers. There were no contested elections this year, so someone moved that we approve the slate presented by acclamation, and after a second, we did just that.
• Recap of 2024 activities.
• Take a peek at some 2025 activities.
• Hold a “white elephant” gift exchange.

2024 was a good year

James, AE8JF, recapped our 2024 activities. They included:

1. Active mailing list in place of a newsletter. No newsletter means that we don’t have to twist anyone’s arm to be the newsletter editor.
2. Weekly 2-meter club nets.
3. AMPTeam outings each month. AMP stands for ARROW Mobile and Portable and they’re kind of like POTA activations and mini Field Days, but people bring all kinds of different stuff to them. The crazy people in our club even meet in the winter months.
4. Monthly breakfasts at local greasy spoon.
5. Fox Hunts
6. Communication support for two bike tours: One Helluva Ride and Tour de Cure.
7. Bus to the Dayton Hamvention. For more than ten years, our club has rented a bus and taken members and others to Dayton.
8. Multiple training sessions and presentations. Every month, we have a techical presentation at our meetings.
9. Two one-day Tech classes in 2024, with a total of 50 students.
10. 14 VE test sessions that gave exams to 99 candidates.
11. Great showing in the Summer ARRL Field Day. In 2024, our club finished first in class 4A in Michigan, and nationally, we ranked 43 out of 4,319 entries overall regardless of class.
12. Participation in community tech events, including the Ann Arbor Library Creativity and Making Expo and the Maker Works Open House.
13. Participated in Jamboree on the Air (JOTA)
14. Made several repeater upgrades.
15. Obtained ARRL equipment/property insurance.
16. Awarded ARRL special service club award status.

Keep it fun

I think that one of the keys to our success is offering a wide variety of activities and encouraging members to participate in those activities that appeal to them. We encourage everyone to do their own thing.

I’m not big on fox hunts, but I do enjoy teaching classes and exhibiting at community events. Our technical coordinator does a great job with the repeaters, but he’s not one of our VEs. The VEs are committed to holding monthly test sessions and supporting my one-day Tech classes, but they may not show up for Jamboree on the Air. The wide variety of activities keeps it fun for everyone.

One result of this is that we haven’t found it hard to fill club leadership positions. When someone decides that they have had enough, someone else steps up to fill the position. I think that’s a very good sign.

Currently, ARROW has more than 160 paid members. And we’re not all old guys, either. Our youngest member is 13, and we have many in their 30s and 40s. We even have a few women, too! Like I said, it takes all kinds to have a successful amateur radio club.

Some people consider ham radio operators to be the original hackers. In this talk, Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, will discuss some of the cool development projects that ham radio hackers are working on and talk about how you can get your own hacker, errrrr ham radio license.¹

This talk was presented at HOPE XV at St. John’s University in New York City on July 12, 2024.

The slides from this talk are published in KB6NU’s There is HOPE for amateur radio blog post.

You can check out all the talks from HOPE XV on the 2600’s YouTube channel. The channel has videos from all of the HOPE conferences dating back to 1994.²