What are your car club meetings like? Could they be better? You BET! But just HOW?
British car enthusiast Greg Prehodka was challenged with this situation when he “volunteered” to run the monthly meetings of the MG Car Club – Central Jersey Centre (in NJ) a number of years ago. After he joined the club, he found their monthly meetings boring and lacking substance. They would hold a simple business meeting and then everyone went home. So he stepped up to the plate and “volunteered” to run the monthly meetings to improve them.
Greg has been involved with British cars since the 60’s and had many years of experience in helping to run other MG and British car club activities, including vintage racing, and would draw from his experiences. He also applied his planning engineering background to lay out a plan and to involve others. As he took over the meetings, attendance rose from about 20 folks per meeting to around 50, as members began looking forward to the meetings and having FUN! He surveyed members for what they wanted, added social aspects to the meetings, got speakers to come in, got a budget for snacks, added a raffle, did some creative things – and much more! He ran the meetings for about five years until he moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, at which time he reflected back on his MG club meeting experiences.
He wrote a detailed document (including an appendix) about the meetings and the results of his changes, with the hope that other clubs might find his reflections helpful to give them some ideas for their meetings. No two clubs are exactly the same and each has its own personality, but there is much overlap in car related subjects of interest. His article provides food for thought about your club meetings and what you might try. Maybe your club meetings could be better! If you would like to see his full article, click here:
Some really good ideas here. Even if our club meetings are already lively and well attended Greg’s ideas can enhance our meetings. Thank you for publishing this and thank you to Greg for sharing such useful ideas with us.