[Ponte Alto] Recruitment

Fri May 4 12:51:53 PDT 2007

  Greetings all, 

 From reading many of these e-mails concerning Ponte Alto's level and quality of recruitment, I would have believed the barony was disarray. That Ponte Alto was losing its members and failing to recruit new people, that its officers were not doing their duty. Luckily I know this is not the case at all. In the last 5 years the Barony has grown by almost 60 people. 5 years ago the baronial polling had less than 150 people. Through the hard work of its officers, the current Baron and Baroness, and the baronial members at large, the barony has increased its membership significantly. By last count the Barony has 205 members. Over the last 5 years the Barony has grown by approximately 40%. At the heavy fighting practice, we have grown from 2 to 3 fighters at a practice to regularly having 10 fighters and periodically having more than 20 fighters. The numbers who fight at Pennsic under the Ponte Alto's banner have grown from 2-3 to 25+. We have a rapier practice which is the envy of the kingdom and our archery has begun to grow and is becoming very competitive. The barony's members excel in the arts, the sciences, and in its service to the kingdom. The increase in our barony’s size and its activity level far exceeds the kingdom and the Society as a whole. For a barony this size, the increase it has experienced in the past 5 years is something for the whole Barony to be proud of. 

 I have provided the above facts to help put Ponte Alto's "problems" in some perspective. This is not to say there are no problems or room for improvements. Clearly opportunities at recruiting new members have been missed. And clearly SCA members who have transferred into the barony have not always experienced as organized a welcome as our barony would have liked. Recruitment is the group's life blood and based on the comments I have read, there are clearly elements of our current system that need to be fixed or at least improved so we can become an even better more welcoming barony. 

 I still feel it is important for all the readers of Ponte Alto's e-mail list to understand where we were and how far we have come. This barony is far from perfect, but I believe it has tried its best to be as welcoming to its new and potential new members as any group with which I have been associated. I would encourage anyone who is on this e-mail list, but has not been active with the barony, to seek its members out at one of our regular activities listed on our web site, or at our monthly business meetings, or best of all, at our monthly newcomers meetings. 

  Thomas of Calais

 -----Original Message-----
 From: icychaos at msn.com
 To: ponte-alto at atlantia.sca.org
 Sent: Fri, 4 May 2007 1:10 PM
 Subject: Re: [Ponte Alto] Recruitment

  Greetings,

I concur with both of the following notes, really I do.  It just seems that 
the main point is still being missed........ 'People' are concerned about 
recruitment.  'People' ask what can be done to recruit and retain new 
members.  'Someone' informs People that emails are going unanswered.  People 
then explain that Someone should keep writing because People are aware that 
there are known flaws with the Main Contact List out there yet People 
blithly leave the flaws in place.  Simply put: then People have no right to 
complain about not getting new People when People know there's a flaw in 
their system and ignore it, _expecting Someone else to deal with it_!!!

Getting on an email list is a good idea, true, but what if you don't know 
enough about the group to even know if you want to be getting their 10+ 
emails a day?  It can be very intimidating to write to a list where you 
don't know how many people may see your post when you know there is an email 
address provided for the exact person who could answer your question 
instead.

It just boggles my mind that the bulk of the responses have said, to the 
effect, Yeah WE know WE have email troubles so YOU should keep trying.  To 
get NYer for a minute, "What the $%@# is the point in having email contacts 
listed on the webpage if they don't work and you know that and don't care 
enough to fix it???  Forget about it!!!"  *NY mode off*.  Seriously, I 
promise you that newbies aren't going to keep trying when they think they've 
been dismissed already.

Think back to when you were all newbies... It takes a lot of guts for 
someone to write to people in positions of authority in a group that they 
don't know!  They did everything they should have: went to the Official 
Contact List of Officers.  Wrote to said Officers.  Waited for a response 
and got nothing.  Decided to write several more times.  Still no response!  
They did everything correct in faith and the Barony did nothing to help 
them.  If you want new members, you have to make certain that you are doing 
everything you can to welcome them.  You can't wait around for them to give 
up on getting responses to emails, decide to call instead, and then be told 
to join an email list of people who have seemingly been ignoring them.  I 
ran a college group where folks could easily go play with the neighbors and 
I can PROMISE that the bulk of the contact effort needs to be on YOUR end, 
NOT the new person's end.  To greatly paraphrase what Sabine said: you have 
to kiss their ass, not the other way around.  Otherwise they'll pack up 
their toys and play in someone else's sandbox.

The goal is to fix things to, as Lady Luce said, put an infrastructure for 
retention in place, not to blame the newbies for being shy newbies.
Ciao,
~Bianca

> > I suggest any time you feel ignored you ry again you
> > never know what is
> > happening on the other end.
> >
> > James de Biblesworth
> >
>
>Or you can always post your inquiry to this list,
>which every one reads and which, as it has been proven
>by this string of posts, will get you a very fast
>reply.
>
>Regards,
>
>Belphoebe
>

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