Club membership growth – Ian Wharton

I’ve been a member of the club for a few years now and the growth of the club is obvious from the race turnout but having attended some committee meetings over the last few months, I have seen the actual figures that reflect that growth. I thought I would share with you some of those figures here.

As membership requires renewal on the 1st April, the club membership fluctuates massively throughout the year. Effectively all membership expires at year end and therefore, unless people re-sign before the 1st April, the club membership starts from zero at this point and grows steadily through the year. Although this is obvious when you think about it, it hadn’t occurred to me before.

The graphs below therefore show a low start at the beginning of each year with numbers increasing until year end.

This gives the strange situation now, where the membership at December 2015 was 383, but membership now is only 290. 93 members from last year have not renewed, at least not yet. That seems like a lot. (It is a lot) but we are only 20 days into the year and I hope that many of those 93 will re-join with a little reminder.

The graph above shows the running membership (pun intended) for this year against last year but if we look at the membership for this point in the year since 2010 (below), it really shows the growth we have had in a bit better context.

Of course we haven’t reached the end of 2016, but looking back at previous years, (We have total membership numbers going further back in time) the growth in club membership is steady, but there is a marked growth after 2012/2013.

I’ve done the following graph to illustrate that growth.

The graph above shows the number of additional members over the previous year. 2014 and 2015 have around 80 additional members over the previous year. Significantly more than previous years.

It makes me wonder whether the start of Cuerden Valley parkrun in August 2013 could have been a catalyst for some of this growth. Certainly, the recent member survey indicated that a number joined as a result of meeting Red Rose at parkrun.

In any event, the figures certainly indicate a healthy club and if the growth continues at this rate, then by 2081 everyone in the UK will be members and everyone in the world by 2108.