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APCUG Reports
January-March 2007

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Membership, Demographics and Diversity
By Linda Moore
APCUG Director and Past President of the North Texas PC Users Group

For the past 4 years as a board member for the North Texas PC Users Group in Dallas, I focused on planning high quality programs with quality vendors. In the process of scheduling these programs, I was sometimes able to get the vendor to provide a copy of the software for a product review and a vendor discount for our members.

Primarily, I have been focused on recruiting new members and retaining as many of our existing members as possible. Some of the interesting statistics that I have discovered is how many new members do not renew after the first year. The NTPCUG membership retention rate has been between 47 and 51%, which is not very good.

We have started some programs that brought in a lot of new members, which included a 4-hour presentation on SQL Server 2005 and a Microsoft Certification Study Group for the MCAD – MCSD. Over 3 months these two programs brought in 40+ new members. Both of these and other leading-edge technology programs have brought us new members in their 30s and 40s, which is great for improving our demographics.

It has also increased our membership diversity, where the majority of our members are developers, IT professionals or small business owners. For the past 2 years, only 20% of our new members have been end-users. With the internet, online tech support forums and the increased level of computer knowledge in the general population, many people do not see the need to spend their money or time in a user group.

However, small business owners, IT professionals and developers will spend their time and money, if a user group is offering them valuable resources and information.

Linda Moore
Linda.Moore@ntpcug.org