I said I answer again after I'd had some time to think about it so here goes. Looking at this post now, maybe I had too much time
Disclaimer – These are suggestions, not complaints. I’m not calling out anyone or in the current or past leadership, as far as I’ve seen the club officers make the best decisions they can at the time with the best interests of the club at heart. Things are the way they are for good reasons and any changes we make should be with the goal of getting better. These ideas were brainstormed by me with no feedback and are possibly the result of too much coffee and not enough sleep, some of the ideas are outside the box, way outside the box. With all that said, on to the suggestions.
Meetings.
We use the same basic agenda for the meeting that Dishman used at my first club meeting 15 years ago. To be honest it’s kind of tired, traditions are great, but how many times can you listen to new member apps before they all run together. Most of the information is already out there on the web anyway. Personally I enjoy talking to friends about cars, life, tires, etc before and after the meeting more than the actual meeting. I’d propose we make the meeting more of a social gathering and less about club business. Maybe let the officers have a bi-monthly or quarterly meeting where the actual business of running the club gets discussed. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate the meetings the way they are but it might be time for a change.
Autocross.
The main problem I see with the autocross program is low attendance/lack of income. I’d propose a goal of averaging 100 attendees per event, but plan to be financially viable at 60 - 80. I don’t think the low attendance has anything to do with the way the club runs events, I feel that it’s just the new economic and social reality. That said it would be nice for the club to put more butts behind wheels so here are some ideas to get there.
• Run morning and afternoon sessions as separate “events” or sessions. I think it's been thrown out before but it's time for a 2nd look. This would allow folks who can’t dedicate a whole day to autocrossing to attend. What I’m proposing is an event where you show up in the morning and we would have run 2 groups, you’d run then work or the opposite and then go home. Then the afternoon folks would roll in around at 1 or 2 and do it all over again. There are lots of logistics around this so it wouldn’t be a simple change it’s just something to think about.
• Propose that the NCAC go back to an 8 event series. When I first started the NCAC was an 8 event series with a points systems similar to ours. Each of the 4 clubs in NC designated 2 of their event to be part of the NCAC. This increased attendance at 2 of each clubs events as folks travelled to other clubs to get in their 5 minimum events. It did have a lot of down sides but some positives as well.
• Allow a non-working autocross entry. This has also been proposed before but I think we should seriously consider allowing folks to run without working at our events, for a cost. I think somewhere between $60 and $100 would be the right number. This would discourage most folks from doing it but allow those who don't want to work a way to participate. In my vision of this you would have a “appointment” at say 1:00pm. You’d show up, run your runs with a minimum of 5 minutes between each one, and then go home. We would space out the appointments so there wasn't a glut of these folks at one time.
• Run some events as dual events with other clubs. Share the site costs and insurance or have us pay for one and the other club pays those expenses for the 2nd. For example we could run 2 events at Danville with Triad. They’d host one and we’d do the other. The attendance would be higher since both clubs would attend the others event, allowing for a higher ROI on the site fees and insurance. Each club would also be paying for 7 events instead of 8 in the year.
• Having said all that I’m ok with keeping attendance around the 80’s, even if the entry fee has to go up to make ends meet. The events are so much less stressful with the low numbers that I think it makes the event better for all involved, especially for those running the events. When we had 120-140 folks at every event, any little hiccup in the ops of the event and we were handing out trophies in the dark!
Other Autocross ideas.
• Reduce or combine classes creatively to generate better competition. This year the STR guys seem to be having a lot of fun competing with each other and that adds value to the time they spend at an autocross. Outside of STR, TIR, and NOV most classes seem to have only 1 or 2 entrants. While it’s always nice to get a trophy it’s kinda pointless to win a class of one. I blame the SCCA for this since they seem to keep adding classes. Honestly it seems like the number of classes has doubled since the time I stopped autocrossing seriously in 2004. I would have run in G-stock this year but there wasn’t anyone running there. For example of a creative idea, maybe we could have 1 or 2 stock classes that use PAX to even the cars out? Let’s say you had all the stock FWD together. The SC Minis would compete against my civic and we would use our DS and GS pax numbers within the FWD stock class. I know PAX sux but that’s a whole other discussion.
• Do an analysis of all the jobs that we do at an event and see if we can streamline them or add as needed. I only say this because many of the jobs and way we do things were created when we were running bigger events.
• Get the vinyl FAQ sheet for the side of the bus. I think this would help streamline the main drivers meeting.
• Think about how we can add value to all the time you spend at an autocross? I don’t have a good answer to this but outside the 4 or 5 minutes you spend driving, what is fun about being at an autocross? How do we “deliver” that fun to the new folks and even folks who have been with us awhile.
Rallycross.
• From what I’ve seen since returning to the club meetings, we need to look at the financial viability of the rallycross program. I was in the leadership of the club when this program started and at the time it ran pretty close to break even and sometimes lost a few dollars per event. At the time we decided this was acceptable because the autocross program was flush with cash and we felt it was ok to support other members in pursuing their chosen form of motorsports as long as it wasn’t costing a lot of money. With lower attendance at both the rallycross and autocross events this put a lot of pressure on that model. To improve the rallycross attendance I have a couple of suggestions.
o Reduce the season from 8 to 4 events.
o Make rallycross a “winter” sport and run the season in the cooler months. This would allow the program to pull attendees from those who dedicate their Summers to autocross.
o Run some “tarmac” events in on the same site as an autocross to get double use out of the insurance and site rentals fees.
o In a utopian world. Find a site that we could run a dirt rallycross and a regular tarmac autocross on the same site/day to save money.
If you're still reading I'm impressed. Thanks for your attention.
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