President's Perspective - 2009/05
Strength in numbers
Fact or fiction? There's strength in numbers. We've all heard that saying. Frequently it's used when referring to membership organizations such as AMA and how the power of the organization to effect change that impacts its membership is directly related to the number of members the organization has.
The larger the organization's membership, the louder the organization's voice. Strength in numbers relates to how an organization represents and advocates for its membership to political leadership.
AMA launched its first-ever national membership drive on April 1, 2009. Virtually all member-based organizations have such drives. Increasing any organization's membership is the key to its strength and its future. AMA's membership drive will last until September 14, 2009.
Programs supported by your dues
Your membership dues are used to fund the various programs that AMA has developed to support our members and clubs. These include:
- Flying Site Assistance Program grants, which have helped many of our chartered clubs improve their current flying sites and, in some cases, help purchase new sites.
- Take Off And Grow (TAG) program, which has helped chartered clubs introduce model aviation to their friends and neighbors and build aeromodeling's credibility within the community.
- Charles H. Grant Scholarship Program, which has awarded more than $1,000,000 in scholarships to our younger, college-bound members; many recipients have gone on to successful careers in the aviation and aerospace industries.
- A structured liability insurance program that helps provide many of our chartered clubs access to thousands of public and private flying sites throughout the country.
All of these programs are important, but equally important is that your dues also support AMA's ongoing efforts to advocate for our members.
Advocacy and the importance of membership numbers
Whether it's being the voice of our members with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or even before Congress, your dues give us the ability to do that.
Although your dues allow us to provide these programs and services, our membership numbers help make our efforts successful. Increasing our membership can only increase the level of influence we have when advocating for you.
In several of my columns during the last year, I've written about the FAA's Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). It was created in 2007 to make recommendations that will eventually be used as a regulatory basis to determine how small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) will operate in the National Airspace System. If you've read these columns, you know that model aircraft, by their very nature, are considered sUASs by the FAA.
The ARC's work will be complete in the near future (and may be complete by the time you read this). We don't know at this time how or if the final recommendations of the ARC will have an impact on what we do as model aviation enthusiasts, but it's more important now than ever before that we do all we can to grow our membership to give us a stronger voice in helping keep model aviation as unregulated as it has been for the last 70 or more years. We need your help to make that happen.
More information on our membership drive can be found in this issue of MA and on the AMA Web site at www.modelaircraft.org/membershipdrive.aspx.
First impressions matter
You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Is that fact or fiction?
I received an interesting e-mail from a long-time AMA member. This person has remained a member, although circumstances prevented him from actively flying for the last few years. The situation changed and this man decided it was time to return to model aviation.
To get rid of the rust, he put together an RTF (ready-to-fly) electric-powered model and headed to the local field. The members at the field didn't know him and were unaware of his extensive modeling background.
What happened next is why this member wrote. The reception he received at the field was, in his estimation, more than a little cool. Here he was, a potential new club member, visiting a local club, hoping to make new friends who share a similar interest, and he felt unwelcome. Although he was allowed to fly, he wasn't offered assistance from any of the others. (Fortunately he didn't need it.)
He is convinced that if he wasn't an experienced modeler, he would have left at the end of the day totally discouraged. Chances are he would have then sought another hobby that might have been slightly friendlier.
When someone new shows up at our fields, even if it's only to watch, it's a pretty safe bet that the person has an interest in what we do. If he or she shows up with a model in hand, it's likely that the club is looking at a potential new member.
It doesn't really matter what type of model he or she has, or how it is powered. It's a model aircraft and that's the common denominator between all of us.
When a new person comes to your field, consider that individual an opportunity. He or she is a potential new member to your roster and an opportunity to promote model aviation and to put your club and members in a good light within your community.
Take a minute from whatever it is that you're doing to say hello. You never know — you might be saying hello to your newest friend.
See you next time.
Dave Mathewson AMA President [email protected]
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
