The new CEO of the ARRL, Howard Michel /WB2ITX spoke at the Ham Radio University event on January 5, 2019. The video below is worth watching to hear Howard’s thoughts on the role of the ARRL. The first 26 minutes are good, but the Q&A session that follows suffers from no audio coverage of the audience.
HRU keynote speaker 1-5-2019 from autocrime1 on Vimeo.
I think Howard has a tough job ahead of him, leading the ARRL through the start of its Second Century, including some long overdue reinvention. He stated that the ARRL has three roles that must remain in balance: A Membership Association, a Business and a 501c3 Charity. This is an important point that not everyone understands.
Howard also talked about the need for a three-way partnership between ARRL members, local clubs and ARRL staff. This partnership is currently weak and needs an overhaul. Lots of opportunity to improve here and tap into the power of volunteer members and clubs.
The slide below shows the lack of success in attracting new hams to become ARRL members. Howard said “something is wrong with the value proposition.”
This next slide drives the point home that the makeup of ARRL members is very different than the general ham population. The slide is hard to see in my graphic but ARRL members are mostly Extra class and General Class licensees and only a small slice of Technicians. The non-members are dominated by Technician licensees. In some ways, this shouldn’t be a surprise…you’d expect ARRL members to more active in the hobby with a tendency toward obtaining higher class licenses. I don’t recall ever seeing this data before.
Howard talked briefly about some work that is being done to analyze the “Spectrum of Hams.” This seems like a clumsy name to me, but it’s really just classic market segmentation work aimed at understanding groups of users. You clump together users or customers that have similar needs so you can do a better job of serving them. Done correctly, this is important and fundamental work required to enable a customer-driven strategy. OK, I said customer driven, in the ARRL context I should probably say member driven. Same idea. Very important and very fundamental.
Now, the resulting model may be wrong. Someone once said: All models are wrong, some are useful. You build this kind of model, test it, fix it, make it better. Sometimes the insight you get doing the work is actually more important than the model produced. I believe the ARRL has been missing this kind of strategic analysis.
I am quite encouraged about what Howard is saying. I think he is poking in the right areas and applying the right set of tools. This will be difficult change management for the ARRL, so I don’t expect it will come easy or quickly. But it’s a start.
What do you think?
73 Bob K0NR
In your opinion, what is the biggest barrier to becoming an ARRL member? I’ve seen some discussion on forums about some ruckus last year where board members of the ARRL were asked to agree with the changes proposed or to keep quiet (or something to that effect).
For me, I am only an ARRL member because I find the articles in QST interesting, but I know that’s not enough for some folks to justify the membership fees.
Perhaps an issue or two of QST to new hams to get them exposed to the types of content the magazine provides, then suggest a membership at regular price?
Hi Barrett,
I personally did not get too spun up about the ARRL Board ruckus last year. I suppose this is because I’ve always been able to reach out to our Rocky Mt Division Director(s) and have a useful and open conversation. On the other hand, I do think that situation highlighted a problem with how the Board (in general) is not well-connected to the membership.
The main benefits I see from the ARRL are: QST magazine, Logbook of the World, contests, awards and representation with the FCC. More info here: https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2015/10/whats-wrong-with-the-arrl/
Sure, free QST magazines for a while (maybe the first year upon first license) makes sense. Still, the overall value needs to be there for someone to pay the membership dues.
This past fall I took the local club’s technician class, and passed the tests through extra. I immediately joined the local club, the people I had met in class were wonderful and it had obvious immediate benefit. But ARRL, I’m still on the fence about and have yet to join. Maybe my problem is knowledge, I don’t know enough about ARRL to begin making a value assessment. Maybe as I spend more time in meetings I’ll learn about it enough to see the value and join. But as a new licensee, ARRL isn’t obviously interesting. It strikes me like other lobbying groups that I haven’t joined like RVIA, I wonder if the value is so obvious to existing members that they don’t know they need to explain it to new hobbiests?
I should add that contests were just a vague curiosity to me prior to Winter Field Day this past Saturday. But going over and seeing our club’s setup, it now strikes me as one of the very best ways to test your gear and setup, that has huge value. So, like contests, I expect my realization of their value will come with time and experience, testing well doesn’t give any actual experience.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the comments.
I think the most visible and obvious benefit of ARRL membership is QST magazine. I think it is a good publication. You might go ahead and sign up for a 1 year membership ($49) and see how you like it.
Pingback: FCC Considers Changes to Amateur Radio Licensing - The KØNR Radio Site