Executive Director: View from HQ
"... make sure you do your part to show model aviation as a positive experience for everyone."
Strategic planning has been an issue with the Executive Council for many years. Since Dave Brown became president, Sunday mornings after the Council meeting are normally devoted to strategic planning.
In August, an entire day was set aside to review the threats, strengths, and weaknesses of the Association. Out of that meeting, the following three- to five-year goals were established.
Five Goals of the Academy of Model Aeronautics
- To achieve a membership of 168,000 persons (26,000 of which will be youth by the year 2001).
- To shift dependence of income between dues and non-dues revenue to 75/25.
- To invest a dollar amount (determined by the budget process) of revenues in improvement to the International Aeromodeling Center, which includes the museum, site, and administration building.
- To increase the number of local flying sites from X to Y. First we have to determine how many flying sites are being used by our members in order to determine what to increase it to. At present, we can only estimate by the number of additional insured certificates that we issue.
- To identify or establish 200 community and primary/secondary school programs using model aircraft in an education program.
Now you may ask what we are doing to accomplish these tasks.
- Membership growth: AMA hired an outside marketing firm to promote and foster the growth of our membership. Some of the programs include soliciting past members for input and rejoining the association, and a pilot program with hobby shops that allows them to sign up new members and provide instant membership. This pilot program was very successful and will continue to be offered to all the hobby shops we have in our files.
The reduction in youth dues has caused a tremendous jump in youth membership numbers. Other programs will be explored next year to reach out and get new members, but these programs can't work if we don't have the cooperation of the hobby shops and clubs.
You are the Academy's public relations in your local area; make sure you do your part to show model aviation as a positive experience for everyone.
Dues and non-dues revenue
AMA's current ratio is 85% dues income and 15% from donations, merchandise, interest, etc. After considerable discussion at various Executive Council meetings, it was decided to branch out into the merchandising field. However, it will take some time before we truly see a profit in this area.
This past year has been a learning adventure. Shirley Cook, who is responsible for merchandising, has had to learn the equipment and techniques to improve imprinting, pricing, what sells, etc. We are hoping to co-op with another firm in order to get good prices for our products, which will keep the cost to the consumer down.
One area we are hoping to explore is customized shirts for clubs, air show teams, and special events. We will be expanding our services next year to include screen printing.
Another area that will generate non-dues revenue is IMS. As I write this column, we have 124 booths reserved out of 208 available. Not bad, and we still have two months to go before the show.
- Improvement to the International Aeromodeling Center: The goal the Executive Council set is to build a new administration building, breaking ground in the year 2001.
Improvements to the site are continuous, but the PADCOM committee, which is comprised of Special Interest Groups, Executive Council members, and members-at-large, will look at the next steps we need to take to improve the site in Muncie. Once the administration building is built, we can look at expanding the museum and museum store.
Local Flying Sites
This is truly a difficult task. One challenge is to determine how many flying sites exist and then see how we can increase this number. We now have a person who is responsible for flying sites and has set in motion a plan to have members-at-large across the country gather data that will help us in this endeavor.
Education Program
AMA has an excellent group of members whose primary objective is to get modeling into the schools. We have partnered with Ball State University in Muncie to do outreach programs to grades five through eight, and are constantly gathering data from individuals who are working with schools or other groups and attending many teacher conferences throughout the U.S.
Hope everyone had a nice holiday season and is looking forward to the 1999 flying season. Hurry up, spring!
Happy flying,
Joyce Hager Executive Director jhager@modelaircraft.org
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
