SURVEY RESULTS

Hello VPS colleague, 

Back in late November and early December you were kind enough to participate in an online General Membership Survey.  

It was stunning that 60 percent of the entire VPS membership responded to the Survey. Now we have the results. They are attached in two documents.

            Click to see:    Survey Detail Responses
                                   Survey Summaries

The “Highlights” file is just 6 pages and provides a profile of the Survey findings. The other file is the Survey and includes the specifics of member responses that you can examine in detail. Both files are in .PDF format and can be read using Adobe Reader. 

As you will see upon examination of these two files, VPS enjoys widespread support and interest among our members across the full spectrum of our programs. However, there are areas of our operation where improvements can be made; the Survey helps us see some of those. 

Our Co-Vice Presidents for Forum Programs, Mary Jane and Martin Fish, have agreed to convene a Forum meeting of VPS on Wednesday, January 25, to have a discussion of the Survey findings. We hope you will join us and members of the VPS Board of Directors at that Forum.  

Finally, one issue that is important to note and which I hope we will consider when we have our membership meeting at the VPS Forum session on January 25 is the matter of our attrition of members. We have been maintaining a membership of about 100 but this fall we dropped to around 80. It is characteristic, I’m told, that we always have a drop off of members in early September when we start up the new year in the fall each year but that the membership recovers after several months. Our membership in the past June at the end of the last club year was over 100.

 

Unfortunately, we have not recovered as well as we would like. As of late November, we had lost about 40 of the members who had been with us last June. Our President, Liz Bumgarner, sent emails on December 7 to encourage rejoining VPS to the folks who had not yet chosen to renew at that time. We hope that many of them will join us again. Perhaps some of the findings in the General Membership Survey will provide some insights to help us retain good members each year. We are not trying to grow much bigger but a loss of some 40 members may not be a healthy sign for an otherwise very strong club. 

Happy New Year to you and your family. 

Best regards,   Phil

 Philip S. Kronenberg
Vice President for Member Communications
Vienna Photographic Society

12353 Lima Lane
Reston, VA
20191
Email:  membership@vps-va.org