For me it's a worthwhile investment. Having the
opportunity to attend meetings / conventions, learn stuff at clinics and go to see various layouts is well worth the membership dues to me. I only attend a few meetings / events a year, but having access to them and the people I meet there, plus a decent monthly magazine, is what makes it work for me. YMMV
As
@fifer and others noted, it's a volunteer organization and meeting quality depends on the people who volunteer their time and energy to put things together. FULL DISCLOSURE - when a volunteer position came up and I did not take a step backwards when everyone else did, I became the editor of our division newsletter.
I was just elected to a Board of Directors position in my Division too. I did raise my hand for that one though... So, I am quite interested in the responses here as we can't get better if we don't have input like this, both from members and non-members.
In our case, we are now doing more 'railfan' oriented events than we were, say 3-5 years ago. In the last 12 months we've visited the East Broad Top, Strasburg, Scranton-area coal mine museums, and have an upcoming visit to the Reading RR museum. Attendence has been spotty (the EBT visit drew as many participants as a "regular" meeting, the others less so), but at least we're trying some new things. We did factory tours of Weaver and Bowser last year too. "Regular" meetings usually feature 2-3 clinics; one in February featured a presentation about the Danish State Railways. That's a subject I would never take on as a modeling project, but the presentation was well done and very informative and the presenter had people standing around afterwards asking more questions.
Is it working? Hard to say, although on average our attendence is up a bit. Our most popular "events" still appear to be home layout tours and meetings with clinics publicized in advance.
Any suggestion from a member about a potential meeting / event opportunity is welcomed by our BOD, and I suspect that is true in the other Divisions too. They can't serve the membership if they don't get feedback. If you are in a Division where you feel you are ignored and/or your time is being wasted, then I would agree your membership dues would be better spent elsewhere and I won't blame you for leaving. It hurts me to say that part, but a hobby is supposed to be enjoyable, not a let down. If you're in that situation but you've not yet offered to help, or offered suggestions on what you would like to see your group do (specific types of clinics, operating sessions, etc.) then take a shot at approaching the people in charge and tell them your thoughts. Their contact info is usually located in your division newsletters, so you can reach out and touch them.
Ron
(That was alot more than $0.02...)
