The thing is that we are currently going through a society changing event.
Peoples priorities and finances are fundamentally changing and a lot of people will be re-evaluating how much disposable income they have for hobbies. Plus isolation is breaking habits which, once broken, are gone or must be re-established. Already I'm thinking "Oh, yes, it's Friday. Isn't that the day I used to go to archery?"
This will be the perfect time for archers to switch clubs, switch associations, or quite possibly in a lot of cases give up archery completely.
The harsh fact is that AGB are going to lose members as a result of the current crisis. How many will depend, at least partly, upon the affection that archers have for AGB. And as Kerf put it, AGB suffer from disengagement. I rarely hear anyone say anything positive about AGB; at best they seem to be regarded in a neutral manner as the organisation that you have to compulsorily join to be allowed to shoot.
Discussions on how to reduce AGB fees, or how your fees are spent, are all well and good but they are really all too late. Plus, what would it save? 20 quid or so? It's an amount dwarfed by the other fees to shoot. I'd happily give AGB that £20 in return for the feeling that they gave a stuff about me. But I'm not on their competition conveyor belt so I don't matter.
Anyway. We are where we are. Disengaged. In lockdown. Considering our finances.
And then, AGB had a perfect chance to redeem themselves with a short moratorium on fees and they blew it. And followed it up with a cack-handed e-mail.
Peoples priorities and finances are fundamentally changing and a lot of people will be re-evaluating how much disposable income they have for hobbies. Plus isolation is breaking habits which, once broken, are gone or must be re-established. Already I'm thinking "Oh, yes, it's Friday. Isn't that the day I used to go to archery?"
This will be the perfect time for archers to switch clubs, switch associations, or quite possibly in a lot of cases give up archery completely.
The harsh fact is that AGB are going to lose members as a result of the current crisis. How many will depend, at least partly, upon the affection that archers have for AGB. And as Kerf put it, AGB suffer from disengagement. I rarely hear anyone say anything positive about AGB; at best they seem to be regarded in a neutral manner as the organisation that you have to compulsorily join to be allowed to shoot.
Discussions on how to reduce AGB fees, or how your fees are spent, are all well and good but they are really all too late. Plus, what would it save? 20 quid or so? It's an amount dwarfed by the other fees to shoot. I'd happily give AGB that £20 in return for the feeling that they gave a stuff about me. But I'm not on their competition conveyor belt so I don't matter.
Anyway. We are where we are. Disengaged. In lockdown. Considering our finances.
And then, AGB had a perfect chance to redeem themselves with a short moratorium on fees and they blew it. And followed it up with a cack-handed e-mail.
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