Welcome to the Membership conf. It is my sincere hope that we can find
a few ideas to help grex increase the membership rolls. Personally, I don't
have many ideas, and this is exactly where YOU come in. YOU have some idea
that would work? Post it, and see how it goes over. It is YOUR grex as well
as mine. Members help insure that there is a grex for us all.

58 responses total.

Well, let's get the ball rolling. I would suggest the Art Fair for a good 
advertising area, but that's over. Oh well, maybe next year. 

    I have a few questions before I make any more suggestions. #1) What is
the current membership fee? #2) Where does all of the money go? #3) Does
Grex offer telnet? (Don't think so, just want to check) #4) If not, could we?

    Once I have the answers to those questions, I can start my wacked out brain
    working, and maybe come up with some workable suggestions.

RE #1 Snafu, Grex *does* offer telnet, but *does not* offer usenet.

Oh. thank you. Pardon the previous response, I was having problems with my
terminal.

 Membership costs $6 per month -or- $60 per yr.

The monthly treasurer's report, as posted in Coop and usually Agora, is a good
place to see how the money gets used.  However, a basic thumbnail sketch is
that all the money goes back into Grex (no salaries), with the bulk of it
going into monthly costs like rent, power, and phone lines.  Beyond that,
there are gradual improvements like the recent Sun 4 upgrade (big project),
various hardware replacements like disk drives, memory, etc.  There's usually
a chunk saved for emergencies, like the upcoming move we have to do.

Ok. At the moment Grex's internet connection (telnet, ftp, gopher, whatever.)
is a dedicated 28.8, right? how long would it take to get money for an ISDN 
or T1? If we had such connection, then people might be more willing to use 
us for their basic internet needs. Also, does Grex have a Web page, and if so
what is it's address? 

Well, Grex really isn't an ISP, since our connection will promptly fill right
up as soon as we speed it up.  ISDN turned out to be still more than we can
easily afford, although it remains something we want to do.

http://www.cyberspace.org

(naturally!  :)  )

  Also, it isn't just a matter of saving up for an ISDN connection.
The initial equipment and hookup costs a fair amount, but the real
killer is the monthly fees to an ISP and to Ameritech.  Grex needs
to get its average monthly income up a lot to pay the current cost
of ISDN.  Hopefully the price will drop, or Grex will find a
charitable ISP to discount their monthly fee (we're always looking!).

Some of that money might be put on credit in hopes of a faster line attracting
more memebers, couldn't it? anyway, about the web page. I have a few ideas
that will attract people to surf through it while they're looking for other
things, and hopefully they'll remember it, or read it, or whatever. Is it
possible to get permission to edit the web page? (Not that I want to do it, my
HTML knowledge wouldn't fill a thimble, but I could list ideas here, or talk to
someone who does know HTML).

  Grex could take a gamble, and hope enough new memberships resulted
from a faster line, but at current prices, that doesn't seem likely.
Internet service for a 56k ISDN connection sells for around $250/month,
which would require another 50 members, on top of our current 90-100
members.  (Members contribute about $5 a month, so it takes 50 to
supply $250/month).
 
  The web pages can certainly be changed.  You can edit copies of them
yourself, installed in your own directory, and if approved will replace
the current ones.  But just suggestions are fine, too.
 
  It's important to note that just attracting people to try Grex out is
not the same as attracting paying members.  In fact, to some extent, I
think attracting more people, when Grex is already overloaded, actually
discourages people from becoming members.  With an overabundance of
users, people get frustrated with how hard it becomes to get on Grex,
and how slow Grex is when they do get on, among several drawbacks.

Ahh. but we could be sneaky and not tell people you can do it for free? no,
that would be mean. so would limiting the time you could use for free (and 
hard too, no doubt. You can make a home page using grex, right? That's one
enticment. Can you IRC from Grex? if so, that's another. We could do the AOL
thing, and give the first month for free? or would that just be the overload
problem? Dnag, we need something good to make people become members. 

   Well, back to the web page, like I said, I don't know HTML worth @#!@, so
if someone would be willing to help me, I could give some suggestions. Well,
I'll give them now. 1) Put it on the Lycos, and any other search programs 
list. If you're on the list there's more chances of people surfing in. Another
thing with the search programs is: 2) Make a large list of words having to 
do with subjects people talk about on grex, and put said list on the
A) Description that the search program asks for.
B) The top of the web page.
C) Both.

Well, there are my two best suggestions. I'll put my mind to work on more,
now that I know that me and omni arn't the only people working on this.

It goes against what GREX stands for to make "the first month free".  GREx
is member supported and availabl;e to everyone, whether they can afford to
become meembers or not.  I don't think many people would care to change that.

I had thought about circulating fliers in the usual places that talk about
GREX's need for members.  Contacting the Observer to do a story with that in
mind is a good idea -- but we'd need a hook that would attract the Observer
and we'd have to be careful how we presented the story.  We certainly don't
need another "sex soaked BBS right here in A2" story from them.

I'm genuinely convinced that most grex users don't understand just how
understaffed and underbuudgeted we are.  If they understood, I suspect that
a lot of them would be willing to help out.

Is there anbyone we can get to prostelytize in party?  That would be a huge
source of revenue right there.  And those are the hard people to reach because
other than the PMOTD, nothing stays around to long.

An article in the People's Food Co-op Newsletter might be cool.  They are very
aware of the problems an operation like GREX faces and might very well be
happy to run such an article ... and any overlap people (Co-op members and
GREX users) would probably be more interested in membership if we could
explain it to them.

If anyone has specific suggestions for improving the Web pages,
let me know.  If I like them, I'll implement them.

Re #13, I understand how hard it is to work things like grex, and I'm very 
willing to help. Also, I didn't mean you could use Grex for ONLY a month 
before you had to pay, I meant you could use the MEMBER SERVICES for a month,
sort of a free trial thingy. 

re #14 The ideas in #12 are my main web page ideas, except for asking grexers
with home pages to link theirs to grex's. Also like I said, add it to various
search engines' databases.

Re nothing in particular Has anyone thought about the cybercafe that's opening?
We could mayhaps advertise their, because then people could get right on and
check it out. but that's at least 6 months away. 

Did grex have an art fair booth? If not we should try to get one next year.
I think that if we could run story/ads in any circulating media, that would
work. Not only do they get read by subscribers, but interesting things get 
passed on by word of mouth and passing on the newsletter, whatever. 

The observer is VERY risky. We may not think we have anything for them to rip
on when they do their article, but they're very good at finding things. They
ripped the guts out of the Underworld for carrying a game called "Death of the
Eldar". So, as much publicity as it could get us, it's a major risk. 

Last thing. What does "prostelytize" mean? If I knew what it was, I would 
proably be glad to do it.

  The problem with offering trial member services is that there are only
two real benefits of membership: voting in elections and being able to
telnet from Grex.  It's not very feasible to make either available on
a trial basis.  If it were done, we'd probably to receive and track
identification sent in by users, which is a pretty big ongoing hassle.
 
  I agree that we could do more to draw in users through the web.  In
fact, I think it would be trivially easy to boost our newuser demand by
a factor of ten inside a week.  I don't, however, view this as a desirable
goal.  Within the context of increasing memberships (the premise of this
conference), I think it's a highly *un*desirable goal, particularly
depending on how the publicity is targetted.  If we put up a lot of "free
web pages, free e-mail" ads, or nudie pics with superimposed messages
like "Talk Sex on Grex," we'd get a lot of users, but probably not so
many members.  Grex's resources are already stretched to the limit.
 
  Cyberzone Cafe should be opening in the next month or two, although
they've had a heck of a time getting construction and city approvals
finished...they have a full kitchen, which created a lot of red tape.
I'm pretty sure we could stick some fliers there, or maybe even get on
their web site's menu.  It's in their best interests to promote any
activity that makes people spend more time (and money) in their cafe.
 
  I think local publicity, as opposed to web publicity, is more likely
to generate more memberships, just because local users are seemingly
more apt to become members.  Press releases, the art fair, or local
fliers all draw more local users.  However, I think gaining regular
new local users, who are potential members, depends in part on being
able to keep Grex's local phone lines reasonably available, and having
Grex be reasonably responsive when people do get on.
 
  "Proselytizing" means trying to make religious converts, often by
preaching.  We need to proselytize the virtues of membership!  :-)

Ok. Yes, I agree. I have a hell of a time trying to get on, and I for 
one don't want more of that. I think preaching in party is a decent idea,
but I don't think we should preach too hard, otherwise we risk alienating
users. (most of them are pretty resilient, but we don't want to annoy them.)
I shall go forth, and spread the word of grex to all peoples, large and small,
in the land of party!! 

  We also could do a PBS kinda thing with the t-shirts. For $20 you get a
shirt plus 1 free month of membership. (llan was selling shirts for $12) and
if you add $6 for the membership that comes to $18, and the remaining $2
either could be mailed to the user, or if they elect, returned to them, or
better for us, donated to us. Mugs could be sold for $12. (6 for the mug and
6 for the membership) and that would offer a second tier, and possibly more
takers.

That is brilliant. I like it. Enticements, and many people would be willing to
donate, if their donation was pile on top of something else.

Re 15 - ADD IT to various search engines?  You haven't looked for
us on any search engines, have you?  We're already on every single
one I know of.

  It could certainly be added more, though, and in categories more likely
to attract new users.  Yahoo lists over 50 "free web page" sources, for
example, and Grex isn't among them.

well, not all of them. As far as I could tell we're not on alta vista, and it
doesn't show up on a lot of interesting topics.

  Just typing "Grex" on Alta Vista turns up around 900 matches.  Not
all are about this system (it's not a new word), but many are, and the
first entry is for Grex's home page.  You're right, however, that we
aren't cross-indexed by all the topics discussed on Grex.  As per my
previous comments, I think that's for the better.

But the previous response about not needing a lot of new non-members (people
are good, but too many craps up the system) is true. I think we should forget
that I ever said we should do web advertising, and work on getting locals to
become members.

  We can focus on locals, but let's not forget those who telnet in as well.

At least that is the way I see it.

  I agree - in fact, a lot of locals telnet in.  As for non-locals, while
we shouldn't "forget about them," I think it's useful to bear in mind that
if 5% of locals, but only 0.5% of non-locals, become members, that drawing
a certain number of local users is likely to garner more new members than
drawing the same number of non-locals.  I don't know what the real figures
are, but there's certainly a disparity between geographic representation
of "users" as opposed to "members."  Some have suggested the disparity is
due to things Grex does to "discriminate" against non-locals, like making
in-person attendance mandatory for board members, but I think that sort of
discrimination is a minimal factor.

i am new member, that's why i want somebody to control me in order to make
me familair to this system.

I've got a brilliant fund-raising idea!! A Grex Disc-Golf tournament!! Charge 
a minimal entry fee, say $3, then have something like free membership for the
winners, like a year for 1st, 6 months for 2nd, and 2 monthes for 3rd. Don't
have to use those times, obviously, and we want to get people registered to
play before we take entry fees, and before we talk to Hudson-Mills (which has
the only nearby disc-golf course that I know of). That way we don't have to
worry  about returning entry fees, and cancelling if we have too few people...

you folks seem to be having the same problems that a lot of coops have:  how
to get users, shoppers, consumers, to pay a reasonable price for the services
that lots of energetic volunteers put their hearts into.  I'm currently
involved with both the People's Food Coop (two stores: Packard and Fourth Ave)
and the Michigan Milling Coop, which owns the Daily Grind.  In the case of
the Daily Grind, they are in almost exactly the same situation you are: forced
to move, and need to bring up membership levels so they can afford to do so.
Not many people understand that coops can only raise capital by selling
memberships, or by getting current members to increase their investment.  The
Intercooperatave Council at the UM is trying to help organize a local coop
network.  If you are a coop, this might be a place to get some ideas.  

I think the fund raising ideas are great, they may be the way to go. I think
one thing that we can continue to do is to bug party people. For a time there
was a message when you joined party mentioning that if they wanted a faster
internet connection that they could help by becoming a member. That is an easy
thing to do. When I joined grex I didn't know it needed money. The only reason
that I became a member was because I stumbled into agora. 
        The action was a great thing for raising money. Grex needs members AND
money. I think one thing to do, would be to send E-mail to the users that use
grex the most that aren't members. Just a suggestion. If I had gotten mail
that first month I would have become a member.

  That e-mail idea sounds pretty good to me.  I'll enter a separate item
in a minute to discuss the idea.

Re that "free membership contest" idea ... it would require a change in the
by-laws, which isn't likely to happen.  You see, the by-laws are very specific
that becoming a member requires a donation od $6 a month or $60 a year.

There is a way around that, though.  If some individual donates money to be
used to pay for a membrship for a contest winner, it would probably work. 
(I doubt that the by-laws even imply that the membership dues must come
directly from th earnings of the member.)

Hi! I am new to Grex but I would definitely want to help in both monetary as
well as support. I am waiting for my papers (h1) after which I shall be in
a position to be a more active member of Grex.Will get back to the support
staff as soon as I am in the US.

Sounds great to me.

        it would help membership if i could find an address
or phone number.

Re: #35 If you are looking for an address for where to send money all the
information can be obtained by typing !support. 

re: 36   the checks in the mail. honest! 

That is great to hear. Thanks.

 Thanks, Pat.

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