The current recruitment campaign was always meant to be different from previous ones and was intended to be a long-term process. So far we have seen minimal response but we never intended to have vast numbers of people turning up each Friday.
So why are we recruiting at all? We come on a Friday to a hall of 70/80 blokes all full of enthusiasm.
We still market ourselves as one of the largest male voice choirs in the UK and we want to keep it that way. By contrast, other longstanding male voice choirs across the UK are shutting down due to a lack of new members and an increasing departure of existing members.
We don’t have a crisis at the moment but we will have in a few years’ time if we don’t have a steady input of new members. We are not saying we think members are ‘past it’. We just want to ensure the choir has a future.
Here are our statistics:
*There are more than 40 members over 80 years of age
*Only 15 members are under 70 years of age
How many of you will still be members of the choir in 5 years or 10 years’ time?
If our membership halved that would lead to a number of problems including, for example:
*The annual subscription would need to be doubled
*Choir tours would be more difficult to put on
*And there are economies of scale which lead to a reduction in costs on other things that we do now which would not be available.
This recruitment campaign looks to the successful long term future of LOMVC and we are only looking to do what other MVCs around the country are doing as they face the same challenges as us.
We are in many ways in a good place at the moment. We have a large choir and therefore a large resource to draw on in order to deliver a recruitment campaign and we have a number of enthusiastic members who have experience of running recruitment campaigns.
Effective recruitment involves a great deal of work and if we are to be successful we need the ongoing support of every single person in the choir and not just a small minority.
We have made a good start and need to continue into ‘Phase 2’ of the campaign. Thank you to those people who have taken part so far and successfully ensured over 1500 recruitment leaflets have been distributed.
I am pleased to be able to tell you that with all of his managerial experience and leadership qualities Mick Jacks has agreed to lead and manage the recruitment campaign over the next few months and I’m sure that like me you’ll all be delighted with this.
Mick will be meeting up with his subcommittee very shortly and I hope you will all support him in any way you can. I am sure he will have tasks for you all and may ask individual people to run with a particular job. One of the main reasons the results have been disappointing up till now has been an inability to find people to take on particular tasks. I hope this rallying cry from me will change that philosophy.
Obviously Mick will come up with his own plan of action which may well involve some of the actions the previous subcommittee were going to implement such as:
1. Leafleting at railway stations, DIY centres, builders merchants
2. Libraries and community centres etc. where our leaflets can be displayed
3. Our recruitment video. There have been lots of comments about how good it is. We need to get this seen by as many people as possible
4. Talks to groups where there will men who might be interested. This is a major area that we need to exploit and I am sure that Mick would welcome any suggestions of appropriate groups that would like talks.
5. Opportunities at workplaces where we might be able to have our promotional video playing e.g. in the staff restaurant
6. Contacting potential recruits via wives and partners. How many of you are here because of your wife/partner suggesting that it would be a good idea?
7. Media opportunities – TV, radio and newspapers. They are only interested in us when we are doing something newsworthy so we need photo opportunities and similar to make press releases meaningful.
If you have any ideas or questions please save them for Mick who I’m sure will be only too pleased to listen. But if Mick is going to spend time in putting a plan together please give him all of the support and help you can.
The long term future of this choir is all up to you. If you want to continue enjoying singing in a large male voice choir then there is work to do.
Thank you for listening and paying attention. I know I have gone on a bit but I care passionately about this choir and I very much want to still be singing in it when I am in my 70s and hopefully 80s.
Thank you.