Declining Membership & Finance.

[mattail]

Hi,

Just like to put 2 coins into the issue.

Emm.. consider it rant.

I ain't no BSAC member, just to be clear about my current position.

Isn't it about time BSAC go international? (A few branches which I can count with 5 fingers in a state doesn't really make it international.)

I won't talk about Branches here, it's their own right to do whatever they want within BSAC guidelines I believe?

How about more BSAC schools? It'll be easier to go into a branch instead of waiting for a branch to provide training. At least an Ocean Diver has something to do (dive) when he/she joins the branch.

A friend of mine who introduced me to BSAC went off to join PADI as she is tired of waiting for a club to response.

Marketing. Is it possible to enlist members to help out, afterall, in a 5 digit membership pool, there are bound to be people in the marketing field.

Website. Please add a "Report Broken Link" or something like that in your website. I found a couple of PADI Schools in the Find a school page. They no longer carry BSAC course, you might want to address that. And links that lead to 404.

And now... the stupidest idea I had.

A self sufficient non-profit organization. Commercialize the schools, but preserve the branches. Offer diving certifications O/D or perhaps even S/D?

I had this DUMB idea for years, I thought I could be the first to implement it someday. But one of my mentors did it before me.. arggh..

I'm done ranting..

Thanks for reading.

[David Walker]

Isn't it about time BSAC go international? (A few branches which I can count with 5 fingers in a state doesn't really make it international.)

For what benefit? OK, obviously BSAC would train more people, but is that necessarily a good thing? Assume, primarily, BSAC exists to serve its home (UK) population, however right or wrong that assumption may be. I think for BSAC to start expanding abroad would cause a lot of problems, without sufficient benefits.
First, the name - you won't get many French people joining the British Sub Aqua Club... just won't happen.
Someone has to translate all of the BSAC materials. Considering that seeingly no one has even got time to correct long-standing mistakes in current materials (a 2 minute job in Word), that will take a long time.
You would need offices set up in every country in which you operate, realistically. Its difficult to manage large numbers of tasks when you're relying on slow and expensive international mail. People in other countries would need a phone number to ring with someone who spoke their own language to talk to.
Now, what benefit do you get? BSAC is a little bit better known worldwide? Well it is known well enough to let us dive anywhere, so where's the problem?
There are some people saying that the BSAC system isn't working very well in the UK anymore, with people organising their own diving and things - so we're going to take something that may be flawed, and spread it around a bit?
Will it ensure that BSAC get more people to help run the club? Well if you need many more staff based in offices in other countries, then you will need a LOT of members in those other countries to break even on new offices, staff etc. Will they give extra resources to improve BSAC courses, etc? Probably not, no more than improving itself in the UK would give it.


There are others but my brain's stopped working. Basically, if membership is declining, then why is expansion an answer? Rather than ignoring the problems and just trying to get new members from new markets, BSAC first need to find out why membership may be decliding. Until that problem is rectified, there is no point in spending a lot of money in taking a potentially flawed system elsewhere.
If BSAC did start moving into say France, then there'd be so much organisation of that needed that the UK would undoubtedly be forgotten to some extent for a while, and we'd just lose more and more UK members while HQ were focussing on their international plans.

The other thing to consider is that being in the UK allows BSAC to provide training that, more than anyone else, is really suitable for UK diving. The DSMB is so common here, yet isn't covered by many other agencies until very late in their courses. Would BSAC still teach that if they were training divers in countries where the DSMB is virtually unknown? What would be the point in that? If not, then we need new training schemes for each country, and lose any possible advantages in economies of scale from any of this.

Website. Please add a "Report Broken Link" or something like that in your website. I found a couple of PADI Schools in the Find a school page. They no longer carry BSAC course, you might want to address that. And links that lead to 404.

Website is in the process of being updated I believe. But I agree, in the meantime it would have been better to just remove many of the pages on there rather than leaving blanks, out of date information and things which are just blatantly incorrect and contradictory. Doesn't present a good image. Even the dreaded "under construction" style page would be better than much of the current BSAC website.

David


Edit:
Hmmm, prize for the most rambling post ever I think! Basic point: declining membership => there is a problem. If there is a problem, then there is no point just making the same problem more widespread when going international. Wait til BSAC's healthy before trying that (if at all).
And website broke, might be fixed, but useless... :O)

[mattail]

Good points, I'll take note of those. :)

[David Dixon]

Good points, I'll take note of those. :)
________

Just thought I?d point out that you are a long way from the truth on the international side of BSAC. There is a wide range of branches overseas ? see list on www.bsac.com (see left hand margin) and you can find numerous BSAC Schools and Resorts on www.bsactravelclub.co.uk (also see left hand margin). BSAC Japan is probably the market leader there. Whilst this is not the place to discuss confidential or commercial developments which BASC Council is working on, I can tell you that we are actively looking at a number of key proposals. Furthermore, I can also say that there are various international developments we are working on aligned to BSAC Travel Club, which will provide enhanced membership benefits, further travel opportunities and in all probability should attract many new and existing divers to our ranks.

David Dixon, BSAC Travel Club Co-ordinator

[Vic]

> But I agree, in the meantime it would have been better to just
> remove many of the pages on there rather than leaving blanks,
> out of date information and things which are just blatantly
> incorrect and contradictory.

I'm not one for removing information unless it is actually wrong; nevertheless, we might want to take a look at fixing up some of the more broken pages.

I ran a link checker over www.bsac.org this morning - the results are at <a href="http://yellowside.org.uk/checkbot-www.bsac.org.html" >http://yellowside.org.uk/checkbot-www.bsac.org.html</a> . Some of it might be misleading (e.g. all the logika.net stuff at the top, which is how the site does its search), but there is clearly some broken stuff there...

HTH

Vic.

[David Walker]

I'm not one for removing information unless it is actually wrong; nevertheless, we might want to take a look at fixing up some of the more broken pages.

Ah yeah, its that stuff I mean though. I'm having a bit of a blank mind moment at the mo so can't think of an example off the top of my head - certainly some of the stuff in the SDC descriptions has been out of date since the new training courses were released. But I agree, things like the old questions shouldn't be deleted until some new ones are done to replace them, although a note to the effect that "these may not all be applicable to the current diver training programme" would be helpful for those who might not realise the change.

David