Should the SBA membership be growing faster??

[The Drone Ranger]

Gavin

Your maths will be right when the mag has 100 pages and full colour A4.

I was going to check the membership stats for you but I run across this letter in the Feb 2005 issue which you might like from Feb 2005
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this less entertaining one from Nov 2005
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By the way most magazines pay their way based largely on advertising not subs

[madasafish]

I haven't followed all of this, so I might be missing the point of the discussion, but
(a) I can't vote on this because I don't know what the growth figures are;
(b) I rather like the magazine. I've only just joined the SBA and read my first issue from cover to cover. Magazines don't have to be just eye candy.
(c) But I hate the SBA website. It's clumsy, hard to navigate, and not very pretty - I think it it will benefit from having some eye candy here.
Kitta

Hmm
Kitta
You don't know how lucky you are. The SBA website is wonderful compared to the BBKA one. The SBA forum ? About 20 years ahead of the BBKA who are regressing..

[Mellifera Crofter]

... Al was persuaded to reinstate the old website so that the SBA has a presence and has continued to look after it on a care and maintenance basis while a new long term webmaster was sought. ... So yes, the website could be more modern but there are reasons for that. ...
Gavin

Hmm
... The SBA website is wonderful compared to the BBKA one. ...

Thanks for providing some history, Gavin.

I apologise for my rudeness. As Al isn't a web designer and taking care of the website in his spare time, he's doing a good job.

Yes, Madasafish, I think the BBKA site is a bit cluttered - and that despite having used a professional web designer.

Kitta

[Jon]

despite having used a professional web designer.

I heard it cost £15,000 and in the process they effectively killed off an excellent forum.

[gavin]

Gavin

Your maths will be right when the mag has 100 pages and full colour A4.

I was going to check the membership stats for you but I run across this letter in the Feb 2005 issue which you might like .....

Excellent SB letters DL. That second letter writer is exactly the kind of person we need in the SBA (and the first one too, but Donald's commitment isn't in doubt).

Incidently, I seem to recall that the Executive were preparing to revisit and debate the organisation's attitude to GM crops. The time seems ripe for a more neutral attitude to the issue. There was one particularly disappointing meeting when they agreed to re-start a lapsed subscription to an anti-GM campaigning organisation (its main function seemed to be to call for a 5-year freeze about a decade ago to allow time for more research), and that cannot be right for an organisation that aspires to hold together a membership with a broad range of views.

So - Executive members (there must be some reading) - are we going to have a debate on this (magazine? forum?) prior to asking the members at the next council meeting whether or not the SBA should be seen as an anti-GM campaigning organisation?

[Neils]

I still don't think it's that clear cut whether the website or the magazine. When it comes to the magazine, what is its primary purpose? To be perfectly honest I don't want or need another publication full of articles along the line of "it's August you should be..." I've already let my sub to bee craft lapse, the BBKA news letter is starting to muscle in on the same area and by time they come through the letter box I've already done my reading up and am doing all the things that need to be done anyway. Can the magazine be improved? Of course it can but I'm more interested in the content than the format. I'd personally like to see a lot more information around what the SBA is doing, coverage of courses, workshops and, dare I say it, I like the interviews. With a new editor I'm prepared to give him some time to settle in and put his mark on it.

I like this part of the SBA web presence, though I'm duty bound to say that, at the moment the only real advantage of the main SBA site is that it presumably cost a good deal less than the BBKA one to achieve the same thing. But again, what is the purpose of the SBA site? Does it re-invent the wheel by trying to be all things to all people and essentially duplicate excellent, pre-existing websites, when it comes to technique? Edinburgh Beekeepers and the Dave Cushman spring immediately to mind although there are others. Should it perhaps concentrate more on pushing the Benefits of the SBA itself? Its education programme, more information on what it is campaigning on currently etc?

Personally I'd rather that the SBA was a pro-beekeeping campaigning organisation rather than an Anti-GM one. The two needn't be mutually exclusive but if anti-GM is the main thrust then I think somewhere along the line a sense of perspective has been lost. If, in the course of promoting beekeeping, that it is felt, based on current evidence, that an anti-GM stance is prudent then I think that basis needs to be made clear. I'm certainly not pro-GM, but I don't actually have any honest objection to it from a beekeeping perspective other than a vague wooly notion that I don't really like the sound of it so if there's something more concrete out there that forms a basis of "my" organisation campaigning against it then I'd like that basis to spelled out so I can look at it in more detail and draw my own conclusions.

[The Drone Ranger]

The new editor has fixed the problem of endless rants about things only marginally connected to beekeeping thank goodness.

I hope we don't go back to printing word for word accounts of local association meeting notes

The letters and interviews are very interesting but I still think there is a need for the month by month beekeeping articles which Eric McArthur has made a great job of producing over the recent months.

On subjects like GM and imidacloraprid I would rather have both sides concisely presented instead allowing it to take the whole magazine over as it did in the past.

I do still think the SBA when considering the future format of the magazine should revisit production costs and values but also take into account that no publisher of any magazine would expect balance the books on subscriptions alone.

Advertising is the major revenue stream and that comes from improved content including product reviews , different hive types , treatments etc.
With the growth in beekeeping there a many more manufacturers and suppliers competing for business than ever before

Reader numbers are also very important to advertisers and the more magazine subscribers the greater the potential so the magazine needs broad appeal to all beekeepers.
Costs of production / unit reduce as print runs increase so achieving membership growth is vitally important .

In short the magazine should not be seen as a cost the SBA bears, but in fact a net contributor to its funding if properly managed.

At the heart of the matter though remains the question

Is the SBA an organisation who's primary purpose is to serve local associations,OR, is the SBA an organisation for individual beekeeper's to join which gives them a voice.?

Currently it seems the former purpose is the primary one and that mitigates strongly against membership growth.

[The Drone Ranger]

Anyone read Beecraft this month and looked at the Local association membership numbers ??

[Trog]

I don't receive Beecraft; can you summarise?

[The Drone Ranger]

I don't receive Beecraft; can you summarise?

Yorkshire beekeeping assoc. in 2010 = 1310 members

List of 24 associations with % growth of between 100% and 1038% between years 1997 and 2010

Pam Gregory reviews David Heaf's book "The bee - friendly beekeeper"
Her comments on "live and let die" beekeeping are very sensible.

You should get a subscription on the go £25 a year( there is none of the SBA renewal is January so it will cost you £25 for 2 months nonsense)