Went back an extracted all the wishes and ideas.
You won't believe the quantity and quality, I very impressed with you knowledge and solutions.
These are just excerpts and not in any order. I will rewrite then but thought it might help to consolidate them for all to help modify and add to.
1) The PRA new "welcoming spirit"
2) Reduce the Dues
3) More bang for your dues A nice, free cap or T-shirt would be walking advertising as well
4) Want group insurance.
5) More gyro airfields
6) Increase Magazine content and more color
7) Set-up worldwide commissioned, telemarketing to sell magazine space making the magazine at least break even hopefully make a profit.
8) Forum Software for PRA
9) eZine watermark each copy of the magazine distributed online to be traceable to the login or registration type security and with testing in parallel and making one issue a year "open to the public"
10) Expand content of on-line mag with threads from here on Build’s like Stan’s, accident reports and way to avoid them, Human interests threads that receives over some threshold in the number of hits it receives.
11) SELECTED articles from the magazine on the website in .pdf format to promote the magazine
12) Common tools.Newsletters, automated billing, Calendar, scheduling, labor request and automatic reminders prior to the event, automatic email notices, use the same forms, letters, contracts, and methods Hosting of chapter web-sites on our server.
13) Schedule gyro displays at all major cross-market events.
14) Member should be able to sign up 10 members and earn your membership
15) Sell the Magazine on stands.
16) DVD's he produces and gives out to anyone interested
17) writing articles for the PRA magazine
18) PRA members and non-members wish to promote our sport and increase the number of members, fields, and places to fly at least and that we have a common vested interest in growing the sport.
19) That for every actual pilot flying there are at least 1000 ‘want-to-be-someday’ that could be singed up each year if nothing else to instantly learn more about the sport, its cost, etc.
20) That there are many untapped vertical markets of ‘adventure type of sports’ events where they never thought of flying gyros before and that could easily be exploited while providing members opportunities to perform and share their aircraft in symbiotic enjoyment of flying that compliments Gyros and vice versa. Examples include on and off-road auto and motorcycle, boat, sand-buggy, and aircraft racers, river rats, geologist, biologist, miners … Baja 1000 and many more fun events to display and fly over the fun all while direct selling memberships to a totally different vertical market. They already have a crowd there might as well sell to them and share and grow the sport.
21) That a successful grassroots’ direct membership plans using tested sales techniques and volunteers could easily be developed to recruit thousands maybe Tens of thousands of new members which will more than pay for itself.
22) That a small commission could be paid even to a non-PRA member / volunteer for signing up a new member. = Self-perpetuating marketing funds and continue growth.
23) That arrangements can be made to be paid by these event sponsors for the gas and sometimes food for performers/ participants for many vertical market events as with air shows and this income can be factored in as payment to volunteers for showing up and marketing for PRA until the marketing plan is profitable and self-sustaining.
24) That Gyro Pilots want to fly these types of events and will fly for gas money to get there?
25) Only scheduling and repackaging is required by changing the ‘concept/ thinking’ of what PRA is selling 'New Members'. Begin selling the dream of learning to be master of the sky with a packet of information, as ‘the product’ worth the $50.00 in time savings alone (and a salesmen closing tool). Instantly you have an increased perceived value with the magazine and the web-site suddenly becoming a freebee for new members.
26) That many ancillary sources of income can be derived from these events that would pay members to participate and be able to fly and pay for the marketing plan as well if you reuse the money for marketing. EG: lottery tickets for a gyro ride. Aerial videos of the event and copies sold to individual participant and even TV and paper news outlets, food and drink is always needed at these out-back locations and it's always a money maker and easy to rent a roach coach for these events that could pay for members to (fly their gyro) and gas to travel to perform/ sell!
27) Increase the magazines profitability by direct marketing (our vertical market to them) the manufactures of these same events to advertizing with RPA sharing there sport and equipment with adventure minded potential customers increasing advertising revenue at the same time.
28) Display board for bike or car show you would be swamped Put a "Dog & Pony" show together. Go to EAA.ORG, cut & paste the e-mail addys of the chapters near you. E-mail them an offer to speak about sport gyroplanes & helicopters at their meeting. Chuck Roberg and I did just that, we could have done 50 of them.
We put together a PowerPoint presentation, they supplied the projector (and our dinners) I was offered gas money many times. Chuck drove up to Wisconsin to speak to a group. They love it. We probably averaged one or two new members for every visit. Sometimes it takes a while to see them though, so don't get discouraged. You can spread the word and end mis-conceptions about our sport. like tractor pulls, big truck meets, local fairs, and (Cars shows
29) "gyro ambassador" Provide opportunity for pilots to fly. The more it is promoted at events where people can come have a look and a chat, find out about it and possibly even get a ride, the more people are going to come into the sport. As John pointed out. " there are many untapped vertical markets of ‘adventure type of sports’ events where they never thought of flying gyros before and that could easily be exploited while providing members opportunities to perform and share their aircraft in symbiotic enjoyment of flying that compliments Gyros and vice versa." People attending these types of events are the types who would be more ready than most to have a go at it given the opportunity.
30) Tim Occonor : If anyone has build reports or anything they would like to see in a PRA magazine article but you don't have the time or desire to write it up please email me and I will assist you or write it up for you. Just send me your info and photos.
31) Grassroots membership drives
32) processing membership renewals, renewal reminders and new memberships, Welcome message for new members.
33) Welcome Pack of info.
34) bi-annual meeting of chapter reps to meet online?
35) use our chapter as an LLC heaven to acquire airfields leases
36) new sources of revenue with fundraisers at events we frequent that are earmarked specifically for marketing PRA or labor tasts
37) hire about 10 commission phone salesmen from around the world to sell ads space for the mag
38) co-op for shared common jobs/labor like publishing newsletters at one central location by one person that all chapters help share the expense and pay for thus freeing the members to market.
39) republish past stories
40) sell food, at every event as a way to provide funds for marketing, etc
41) Reduce the critics by making the airport produce some type of annual income
42) I am a VMD vendor. It is the largest motorcycle swapmeet in the world. It cost me close to 2K a year to participate. I will gladly add the PRA display to mine and talk gyro kits to bikers.
43) Publish the test mag for free during the tests
44) What if you could receive each issue of the magazine online, then get the entire year's five or six issues mailed to you, all at once, at the end of the year?
45) Make events better by planning them in advance on-line. I think this thread is a good example of how a collection of people can hash out some ideas and bring many new ideas to the table making some good ideas even better.
46) TRADING ads in a motorcycle magazines and all others that will trade.
47) PRA can help the Chapters and the Chapters can help the PRA driving memberships for each other, support, news, events, sponsors and more
48) offering a student membership at a reduced rate
49) giving a reduced camping rate for PRA membership holders. Even if it is just $5 it will give a perceived value to members.
50) Instead of worrying about people "ripping off" the PRA, we need to concentrate on building a PRA that is more like "family". You wouldn't rip off family, would you?
51) Earmark a portion of any noticeable increases in membership from trading ad’s with other magazines for full-time marketing, etc.
52) monthly request for labor
53) Figure out what percentage of the PRA budget you believe goes to everything else but the magazine, multiply that percentage by $50, and send that much as a donation to PRA in lieu of joining or renewing.
54) Remove the free mailing of lifetime members of the magazine the eZine would be free.
Fastest start I've ever seen.
John
Edited:
55)When it comes time to review the bylaws, think about including a requirement that BOD members can only miss so many so many online meetings before losing their seat.
56) designating one board member to be the liason between the PRA community via this Forum and acting as a info conduit between the two
Extracted from another thread. See:
http://www.rotaryforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16823&page=2
57)Ads in publications are usually sold in column inches. That means one column wide and one inch deep. Paul Abbott made two ads for PRA, one one-column-inch ad and one two-column inch ad. I sent both to the chapters. FYI, the ads Paul made are 2-1/4 inches wide.
There's always a catch! The catch with ADVERTISING is that PRA would have to pay for the space. This is what we've done with the EAA Sport Pilot and Cycle World ads.
What you'd be doing in PUBLIC RELATIONS is to be treated more like a Public Service Announcement on radio or TV -- it looks like an ad, but please place it as a public service.
You know, if you had several generic "ads" ready to go, they wouldn't have to be used just for Mentone. They'd work for Bensen Days, ROC, El Mirage -- and any PRA chapter fly-in. Just adding to your idea...
"And how about a format for a generic notice for a calendar entry?"
This part I'm working on right now, also automatic: billing, volunteer labor list with email notification when it due, verification and greeting letter to new members after submitting your payment, auto e-emailing of everything to everybody in our database.
Your request for calendared press releases has just been added to the list.
58) Sell advertising to 2 manufactures a year placing a picture of their safe aircraft on all of our press releases and ads for events. Then everything we advertize for an event would include in our background logo pictures of there aircraft advertising them at the same time subliminally every time we place an ad in another publication.
59)If we can burn a DVD with many old issues it will sell worldwide and along with the current magazine for the price of one year´s subscription it wil be a hell of a marketing tool.
60)The best thing that could happen towards educating an uninformed public about gyroplanes is through the use of video, hands down.
We have a number of talented videographers in our ranks...Tim Chick, Dan Donley, Shawn Adams, and others. I also used to own a video production company, and really enjoy doing video production. (Birdy has even recently put up stuff on YouTube. If you want to get people excited about gyro flight, let them watch Birdy fly!)
I think there is enough high quality in-flight footage already in existence that with a few interviews from knowledgeable people sprinkled in and some structure added, a great gyro flight video could be created to dispel many of the myths of gyros.
This video can then, again, be put on YouTube, MetaCafe, etc., then embedded on aviation blogs, PRA website, possibly even distributed on DVD at fly-ins for a low fee.
Possibly you could get some small subsidy from Butterfly, Dominator, Xenon, etc. for inclusion in the video.
Just my opinion...I've been thinking about this for a while now.
I think Shawn Adams actually had started what was looking like an absolutely exceptional documentary on gyros...not sure whatever happened to that one.
61)sending letters to some or all past members and asking them why they left and what the PRA can do to get them back.
Ps
If I missed any please point them out, thanks!!!
