Hey Jim,
Its a novel and interesting approach, I hope NCRC runs with it and gets good results.
We've taken the stance of not to promoting DBTC to individuals, especially not with actual coral. There are a few reasons:
- Our experience is that promoting DBTC to individuals (instead of clubs) drives DBTC for all the wrong reasons (i.e. the line for free coral starts here!) and encourages people to join the club for free coral, not to learn to be a better reefer or to become part of a community. We may have a few DBTC cards that we give to people in other clubs, but even those don't seem appropriate for the general public. Sure, one strength of the program is to leverage greed in favor of what is best for the animals and the hobby, but there are so many ways it can fail that we feel it is best to promote it to clubs, downplaying the whole free thing to individuals.
- While we welcome new members, we're happy with our current size and don't feel the need to promote membership growth; especially not membership growth that entices people to join for discounted/free coral. So we stack the deck a bit by not promoting some aspects of the club as strongly at public events like this. BAR People at our table will be talking a lot about community and ethical reefing instead.
- As for what to do about all those unwanted DBTC animals, I would rather see us box them up and send them to another club to help get their DBTC off the ground. While it is a bit of a distraction, BAYMAC is a great place to get people to bring corals for shipping to other clubs. Anyone with mad shipping skills want to volunteer to do that?