During the previous Council meeting, a substantial amount of time was spent discussing strategies on how to effectively grow the membership of our Institute, and to keep it growing year on year. As the SAIMC finds itself in a definite 'consolidation year' due to administrative and financial issues that had to be resolved last year, it is crucial that a new strategy regarding marketing and membership growth of the Institute be formulated and implemented as a matter of urgency.
At the same time it is quite clear that one of the easiest methods of increasing the membership count is to establish new branches. The best example of this fact is the huge growth shown by the Secunda branch in the two years since their establishment. With the founding of the Witbank sub branch recently, membership in the Mpumalanga area is set to rise even further.
Our president, Graeme Bell, suggested that each branch be set a target for growing their own portion of the membership as, after all, without a steady growth in membership the SAIMC will become stagnant. A short workshop will be held after the next Council meeting to discuss the growth structure and marketing plan. Anyone with suggestions and ideas on how to make this a success must please feel free to let us know, your inputs will be highly appreciated.
It was noted by Richard Teagle, our immediate past president, that the Institute seems to grow at a rate of around 6-8% per year, but at the same time we are also losing members at the same rate. This decay is due to various factors such as the shedding off of nonpaying members, voluntary resignations, etc.
The Council meeting took place on 16 May, and some of the points discussed included the following:
Secretariat
Cost Time Resources (CTR) will be circulating lists of names of new, existing and unpaid members to the branches to enable them to correlate with their own databases. Branch Chairmen must please action these lists as soon as they receive them and feed the correct information back to CTR.
Finances
At year ending 31 December 2001 the SAIMC showed a 'break even' situation and the main reason for not being in the positive is the very long list of outstanding invoices for subscription fees. Members must please forward their subscription payments as soon as they receive the invoice for it.
The date of the next meeting was not available at the time of printing.
Parting shot
The Branch of the Year competition is set to be a two horse race once again this year between Johannesburg and Secunda. What is it about the two top branches in the country that scares the committees of the other branches so much that they will not even enter the competition? Maybe we should formulate a 'Best of the Best' contest between the top two, and allow the rest of the branches to compete for Branch of the Year?
Johan Steyn, johans@kubler.co.za
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