Clubs - What do we do now?

N1PNR writes "In the early 90s when I first got my ticket, I got involved with my local ham radio club. It was a small club, but always had decent turnout at meetings and was fairly active, with a packet BBS and repeater. It wasn't just the old guys, either. There were a lot of us young guys who were involved and came to the meetings. After I was involved for a year or so, attendance started to drop off and there was talk of merging our club with another from a nearby town. Around this time, a lot of things started happening in my life, and I disappeared for a while (5 years or so).




Well, now things are settled down and I am looking to get involved with the club again. I just talked to the club president who informed me that since I left the club did merge with the other club, but attendenace and activity is still poor and going downhill. Apparently, they couldn't even get enough people interested in field day this year to even bother setting up for it.



I am hoping I can get some help for my fellow hams on QRZ with some suggestions or ideas to give the club a boost. What sort of activities does your club get involved in? How do you recruit (and keep active) members? How to you get the younger guys involved and keep them interested? I am grateful for any help or insight you can offer. The one thing I ask is please don't turn this discussion into an us-versus-them, new ham/old ham, code/no code, restructuring/I-had-to-walk-to-school-in-6-feet-of-snow-uphill-both-ways discussiion. Thanks for your help in advance."