The large majority of reef keeping hobbyists in the Bay Area don’t know about BAR, or at least don’t know enough about it to know if they’d want to be part of it or not. Including people who are great and who would make wonderful additions to the club. Also including people who would not be a good fit for the club.
In a perfect world, all the reef keepers in the Bay Area would know about BAR, including the pluses and minuses, and those who enjoy the club and contribute to the club would be part of it.
In the actual world we live in, we need to put some effort in to getting the word out to new people about how BAR exists, what we like about it, and what the benefits are. I’m fully aware of the fact that some new members will not be a great fit, but we also want the ones who will be great. There’s no reliable way to figure out which is which up front.
There is a big difference between giving out a bunch of free memberships to people who just want free stuff (bad approach) vs putting in some targeted effort to introduce new people to the club (good approach). This can be striking up casual conversations when selling/giving away coral outside the club, or to other customers you bump into at LFS’s. Having our cards at checkout at our LFS partners is another example. Our outreach booth at CFM is a big one. Open swaps vs members-only swaps.
I don’t want to grow the club‘s size at all costs. Obviously. But we do need a certain number of new members coming through every year to maintain the club, because we have a certain number leave every year. For example, the entire Board of Directors (aka chief volunteers) this year are relatively newer members within the last decade or so, and all of our new additions to the Board are even newer than the average member. These are people who are introduced to the club through outreach. Those that are a good fit stick around and help out, and those that aren’t move on.
As far as the comment about shrinking down to 10 good members being fine, that is completely incorrect. BAR as we know it would cease to exist if we only had 10 members, and it would be a punchline to boot. More people than that come into any given LFS in any given hour. If we can’t keep our membership up to 10% of the reef keepers in our area we are doing something wrong.
. Also whenever I use Vibrant in the community forums, even though it is supposed to make things more clear, I find if messes up the balance of bio-contributors...some leave immediately!