🚀 go-pugleaf

Jon:

I think you're right, there's a lot of members who aren't actively involved
in things, and never vote. Last year CIPS Ontario set about getting e-mail
addresses for the approx. 400 I.S.P.'s in the province. We got about 300
from the electronic membership list, and then put an appeal in the national
newsletter and the Toronto section newsletter for Ontario I.S.P.'s to send
us their e-mail address so that we could reach them more effectively. We
got 2 (count 'em 2) responses. So now we can reach 302, or 2/3 of our
members, electronically.

I know that CIPS membership (at whatever level) servers some purpose for
all of them, or they wouldn't keep paying the dues. It may be that the
newsletters, web sites, newsgroups, web store, member benefits, etc. are
sufficient for some people. When I think back to my early days as a
software developer (hint, you had to be a steamfitter as well as a coder),
we were not "joiners". We saw it as a somewhat solitary, artistic pursuit.
It wasn't until I began to get more responsibility for system design,
projects, and staff, that I joined CIPS.

Who knows? But I agree that one should not read too much into whatever the
voter turnout is.

Regards,

Bill Ross





Jon Nightingale <night@ucs.ubc.ca> on 02/24/99 06:04:48 AM

Please respond to CIPS General Discussion List <CIPS-L@LISTSERV.UNB.CA>

To:   CIPS-L@LISTSERV.UNB.CA
cc:    (bcc: Bill Ross/CTAL/CTC)
Subject:  Re: The vote: What the numbers will tell me




On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Rick Dondo wrote:
<snip>
> IMHO, if we fail to engage a significant majority of the membership in a
> meaningful debate on the subject, then the Society is not serving its'
> stated purpose. IMHO, if votes are cast by less than two-thirds of the
> members (roughly 4600 by my calculations), then I will indeed wonder
whether
> we will ever succeed in engaging them in any Society activities. That,
IMHO,
> would seal the decision for me as to my own future in it.
>
Some thoughtful ideas here, thanks for the message.
While a large voting turn-out would be admirable, I suspect it will be
far lower than this.  Over many years in CIPS (including several at
the national level where I was responsible for membership promotion)
I've observed that CIPS has always had a large silent majority.  It
has struck me as somewhat curious (I'm the type who likes to be
actively involved) but in talking to folks in other organizations this
pattern is quite common.  For example, we currently have around 600
members in CIPS Vancouver section, but we draw less than 100 to the
average dinner meeting.  Even assuming some people only attend one or
two events less than half the local membership ever comes out to an
event.  This has been the pattern for the 20+ years I've been in CIPS.
(I don't know the actual numbers but I'd be willing to bet that not
much more than 10% of the membership actually voted in the national
elections last year.)
I've long since given up trying to figure out why there is such a
large percentage who don't participate, especially after finding out
that the CIPS experience is the same for a whole lot of other
organizations.  We've tried various means to engage these folks over
the years without much success.  From my perspective we are happy to
have them - they boost our numbers and we can certainly use the
membership revenues.  I suspect that for a lot of these people the
current situation is, if anything, a passing curiosity.
So I would suggest that trying to read too much into voting numbers is
not terribly productive or indicative of the health of the society.
__________________________________________________________________
Jon Nightingale, I.S.P.         | Internet: night@cips.ca
Phone : 604-263-8806            |      Fax: 604-263-8827