by
Craig » Tue May 09, 2017 1:50 am
Good article - although yacht clubs are just one piece of a deeper, broader trend. Rotary clubs, Lions clubs, service clubs, chambers of commerce - there's just a very broad trend away from joining anything. We used to close our neighborhood street and have a neighborhood cook out. That petered out for good about three years ago. Church is the same way. We like traditional services and music, so we go to the 8:30 service with the 90 year old. There's a later morning service with snare drums, etc. We don't know those people, never see them, never interact with any of them. Might as well be two different churches. Fractured, splintered, fragmented.
When it comes to yacht clubs in particular though, I think the biggest thing clubs are missing, and one of the biggest barriers to staying vital, is the initiation or entry cost. The older members with high levels of disposable income have forgotten what it's like to be younger and supporting ever more expensive kids. They have to lower those initial entry barriers because in this time of declining "join-ism" to anything, the younger potential members will just do something else.
