Surrey Association MemberMojo example @Peter Sotheran - From my occasional visits to other towers, I get the impression that many of them don't feel any affinity with the branch. Is it for these towers to find the branch contacts and seek them out, or is it for the branch to adopt a 'evangelical' approach and try to draw them in?
I agree that this is true for some towers within most Associations and Guilds and I think the challenge is that the Officers who would need to do the evangelical outreach are volunteers with busy lives and a high level of existing commitment which makes it hard to also add visiting the less involved towers.
So it does happen to some extent, in many Associations and Guilds, but it’s also useful to make it easy for ringers in these towers to find information and contacts if they want to look for opportunities.
So keeping a website up to date, providing a place to make contacts through Facebook and sending an email to all members two or four times a year can help ringers in less connected towers to find connection to the Association or Guild.
All of which requires input, time and commitment from core people within the Association.
@Roger Booth made the point that often new ringers have lots of enthusiasm and are therefore willing to travel for opportunities to ring and wiling to support the Association or Guild to do more.
I think sometimes we need to be more open about our needs within a Committee of Officers and ask for volunteers who can update the website, or visit less visited towers with news of the activities available and not worry that people who might volunteer to do this are not the most experienced ringers.
I can imagine that simple introduction guidelines and ‘how to’ for these kind of activities could be made available on the CCCBR website to make it easier for someone to feel confident about tackling the five year out of date Association website or setting up a newsletter email which hasn’t been sent since pre-Covid times. Whilst every Association and Guild is different greater opportunities to share ways of doing things ought to be helpful if we are needing / wanting to grow the level of activity through new volunteers.