[MR] census conclusions

[Beau Meredith]

Your grace,

    You were in fact the king I mentioned. I never said anyone was thrown to the ground. However one of your knights laid hands apon my man and attempted to bend him over to bow to you.This person has been in longer than you and is well aware of SCA custom. I remember when you would not even where the colors of the barony of which you were the champion of. So it did in fact happen and I have no reason to lie or exaggerate, therefore I do not appreciate the inference that this is a made up claim. The incident is long past and was only used to illustrate a point. The point being that the attitude of the leadership has deteriorated over the years, this is one of the main problems with retention of new members. A gain of 7000 members does in no way mean growth when we lose 24,000 out the back door during the same period. The survey is not a complete picture as it only measures those that responded. The paid membership numbers have hovered around 30,000 for
 over 20 years. Look at the graph showing time in the SCA the largest percentage 19% have been in for 20-29 years. If we were growing this would not be the largest category, it would be the smallest percentage. There are many reasons for slow or declining numbers. At the present the lack of a healthy economy is our biggest problem. The younger generation is gravitating to larp and other such groups I believe it is largely due to the high cost of SCA participation. In the early days armour standards were lower and one could effectively build out a suit in ones garage with a little guidance. With Helms running 500-900 and up most younger people have a hard time coming up with that kind of cash. However
as I said we can do little about the economy and nothing about people choosing between school, work and the SCA. What we can do is look at the reasons cited by those who have left and see where we can improve apon the
product delivered in the case the SCA. There are currently around 3-400 people in the charlotte area alone participating in SCA like activities including a spin off group. there are currently around 4 heavy fighters in the SCA that do any regular fighting. These numbers tell me that we are missing our opportunity to recruit these people into the SCA and that there is a fundamental flaw in our approach to recruitment. Also the numbers of disaffected members regardless of the reasons cited is another
core issue with the society as a whole and is not limited to Atlantia alone. The fact remains that the culture of the society needs to change
or it will slowly die without new blood. So I will repeat my closing statement for you to consider,at your nexy eent ask yourself "Am I being a good Ambassador for the SCA?".
Beau