By Michael Sherburne
Membership retention is a key ingredient for any section trying to raise participation at their Conclave. Innovative tactics have been tried by many sections to entice Arrowmen of all ages to continue coming to Conclaves. Three of those sections, SR-1B, SR-6, and SR-9, each have a special centerpiece at their Conclaves, which has led to attendance growth. SR-1B started their new plan in 2008, organized by former section chief Mark Norris. Initially, the lodges in SR-1B had a history display competition; however, Norris noticed that they needed another way to excite the participants.
Norris started an event called Founder's Festival, which is similar to Founder's Day at NOAC. The festival became a great success, with the lodges trying to outdo each other every year. "Lodges had cooked shrimp and grits, cotton candy, crawfish and boiled peanuts," Norris said. The Founder's Festival took time to become popular with the participants, taking many years of changing its aspects. However, the persistence paid off. The event is now the centerpiece of the SR-1B Conclave.
Another inspiration from NOAC led Section SR-9 to create the Tailypo event for their Conclave. SR-9's past Conclave promotions coordinator said the unique name for the event is something made up as a joke to encourage attendance at the event. "It's a mythical creature who lives in the North Mountains and scares Arrowmen who don't come to Conclave," they explained. However, the Tailypo does not just scare those who do not come to Conclave. It also rewards those who do attend with gifts to share with others.
Fun events help bring in members to Conclave, but what about completely changing how training is done as well? SR-6 came up with an idea to turn training into four colleges. They are: The College of Meteu (political science), College of Allowat Sakima (management), College of Nutiket (ceremonies and American Indian Activities), and the College of Kitchkinet (first year studies). All first year starters in this training program go for their Bachelor's Degrees in their respective colleges. The second year, the Arrowmen go for their Master's, and are also expected to help teach classes. The third year, they can also earn a PhD in their college. Current Section Chief Aaron Shepherd said, "This past year we had around 75% of our participants attend training (around 400 Arrowmen)." This shows how successful the training became, and how effective SR-6's new approach to training is.
An important lesson anyone can take away from the success of these sections is to take an event that could be improved, and to think outside of the box and come up with a new approach. Then, continue improving the new approach to create a quality program. These three sections all added or improved upon older methods, and they had a great plan to follow. Most importantly, all of their plans started out with the question, "How can we bring back Conclave participants year after year?"