Originally Posted by Mart
I was thinking more in the line of Campus, 9, 11, 21 and Clio conversion members we've gained since becoming RTOC. Of which there have been many over the years.
I'm not sure you can speak for all of them Mart. Yes I think it's about the existing members but as mentioned previously, it's also about future non-GTT members.
Where is it written that a car club has to call itself by the model owned by the majority? I agree that the name should be appropriate, and RTOC is exactly that IMO, given the current club direction and the current membership mix. Of course there's no argument that the large majority of RTOCers are GTT owners.
Agreed, that's what we're doing isn't it?
But that's past tense. How many members akin to that do we get these days? Most Clio conversions now consist of turbo'ing the 1.8/2L F-series lumps, rather than the C1J, and hence those people, in the majority, now reside on ClioSport. There can't be that many more 9, 11, 21 etc Renault's out there where the member's aren't already (or were) rtoc members, or at least aware of the club.
I'm not speaking for anyone mate; just myself. If the club's future is more non-GTT members/owners, great, but we're doing nothing to promote that as such, as I keep repeatedly saying. Again, some may say we don't need to, and are happy the way things are.
Totally agree, but is there a club direction per se?
I think the club has been dwindling for some years.
The direction now seem to be ditch the body kits and restore the 5GTT's to original and wait for the price to rise.
I thought it was a great mistake to fit the C1J into the Clio's.
And why has this club not got ALL the Clios with turbo converted modern engines?
I think there's been a lack of drive and interest to take the club places for many years. Personally I've been on sick leave for many years and not near the forefront of any car upgrading for at least 6 years. Miller has the ability to do stuff and make things happen but he's barely wanted to, or just preferred to give his time to other areas of his life. Who else has there been since Rachel Head or Goher or people before then? Bruce seemed keen but not really able enough and managed to alienate a lot of people including Rachel. When Bruce moved over was there a stampede to take over? No-one. Rach nominated Miller. I think if it wasn't for Mark Philips web design skills and ownership of a 5GTT the 5GTTOC would possibly have fizzled out in the late 1990's.
Sure there have been individuals with a lot of personal interest and have created nice cars, booked days out, won competitions. But none that felt a need to grow this car club to something really big.
I think a great mistake was to keep if just to turbo charged cars back at that meeting at Santa Pod in 2000 or whenever it was that Goher handed over to Rach and the new club was formed. That was a reaction to what was the present at that time, with a slight view of the near future but not really a distant enough one.
Anyway. What to do now is the question. Let the club slide downwards as it is doing until there are only 10 members, or try and do something to morph it into a sustainable .org, a place that has use to a wider community.
Who's going to do it? I don't mind helping but that's the best I can do.
Ok but your posts on the matter have all been past tense thus far. Hence why my responses refer to the past but I take your point, things are different now and they continue to change.
You're right, we need to deal with what is best to do from here (if anything) and be frank about what we think the future will most likely look like for the club.
Agreed. More could be done, I don't think we've had any disagreement on that point. I also agree that potentially nothing needs to be done, in which case the name of the club stays the same doesn't it?
We have an intended direction (or at least scope): welcome to the internet home of the Renault Turbo Owners Club, the largest collection of Renault turbo enthusiasts on the internet. Catering for all types of Renault turbo including the 5 GT Turbo, 9 Turbo, 11 turbo, 21 Turbo, 25 V6 turbo, R5 Turbo 1 and 2's, Alpine, Gordini, Twingo turbo, Megane Sport Turbo and other one-off's and modern Renault Turbo variants too.
How well the club is doing in fostering that statement and growing the club within its scope is open for debate. We should move the discussion forward to working out whether that scope needs to be changed and if there's a change, we could then look at whether the current club name is still appropriate or whether it ought to be altered.
Last edited by Trevhib; 08-10-2012 at 15:04.
It's turning into a great discussion
Ian, I'm fairly sure that the people who have contributed to this thread will help out where they can, I certainly will, but surely this all has to be instigated by Miller, or in the least, the Committee first?
My comments & opinions mean jack sh1t in the grand scheme of things if Miller & the Committee deem everything is fine on the good ship rtoc...which, ironically, my thread of that same name from a few weeks back turned into a sh1t fest for me for asking similar ish questions to those in this thread.
I'm not gonna light that fire again, but if you're asking the question:
That tells me that you're also concerned for rtoc's future, and for a founding/current Committee member to say that, I'd say that's a worry for all rtoc'ers.
I moved this from General Chat as I want to talk about money.
We've enough funds to pay for hosting for a few years so the web site should be safe, apart from somehow being deleted as happened in May 2008. I have it backing up nightly, (I think!) with the hosting company, iomart, based in Scotland, who took over Global Gold a year or so. We may be stretched if we have to fork out quite a bit for the going rate for a new site to be made.
As has been discussed recently, I do my best but I'm not proper geek enough to, eg, hack the source code, or even write php pages. Scoff keeps this amended and working as when needed but it seems he'll not be able to write new sections or anything.
The income from current membership is not too bad but it's not like it was a few years ago. When we have events they need to break even really or near it or we will be running down the reserve and then be too short to subsidise any further days. This is obviously going to happen anyway if the member numbers drop a lot further.
Regarding changing the fee structure. I'm inclined to agree that a lower joining fee would help a bit but we need to keep the renewals, so a flat rate may put off some of those. Some needs to do some kind of accurate forecast of what the effect of fee changes will be. When they went up, the joiners dropped and the renewals rose.
For someone on benefit trying to manage in their own home, even £10 has to be though about, but for the rest, is £25 really putting people off? How many? Even the tiny Fiat club has a £20 fee which even I still feel is worth paying, for how to info to keep it running, and some parts from the members only classifieds, while I still have one of those cars. They only had 110 members but this year I'm member 30 or so and I was late to pay the fee. Things have more or less died there now and I get more output from the free Fiat Forum, but look at the size of it and it's vast model specific area: http://www.fiatforum.com/ The Cinquecento section: http://www.fiatforum.com/cinquecento-seicento/ Each have their own classifieds: http://www.fiatforum.com/classifieds/showcat.php?cat=51
If we did something a bit like that we still have to make some money from it to pay for everything. Maybe their income is from Fiat or from advertising, or both. But that way, even if the 5GTT part shrank and shrank, the club would still carry on with enough income to hire larger events, etc.
But who's going to make that happen? Or anything. It's good that people say they'll offer but the club needs people with ideas who want to do it. There aren't enough people to do much beyond try and keep on top of the daily admin. Lots of people left the committee this year and we're lucky to have two good new volunteers, for memberships and the shop, two key features of the club.
I think Miller is not going to be contribution much this year as he's giving his time to refurbishing the rest of his house. He's not the club leader as such, but one of the management team who's mostly on leave.
There's no senior area rep, no press or advertising person and Steve has said he wants to do the national day, but not organise smaller meetings, though that can be thankless if only two people turn up. More events like the Scoff RR days would help, I think, to make the club a more fun and interesting and alive place to be. But how many current members will go to those. The Cinquecento club have maybe 10 people turn up to cars shows and events several times a year and that gives them some yearly social club plan. RTOC no longer has that, just one meeting really.
I could go on a bit more repeating previous posts but I have to go now and do stuff.
Here's what this club could do with more of? https://www.rtoc.org/boards/showthread.php?t=30305
Except that should be in the Megane section, not general chat? But who would have seen it there?
Speaking as an outsiderI do not think this club will attract a wider Renault membership .I'm in a few but most tend to stick to their own cliques and established clubs/forums .You need to get in on the ground floor with new models .
It would need a major publicity drive and press coverage and someone willing and able to do that sort of task .
Membership fees should be at a flat rate .15 a year seems fair to me .
I have no time for much CM input these days but that may not always be the case .Life is fluid ,but we do need more input/help from area reps and the general membership .
You just need the will and enthusiasm to do it .Not being on the list shouldn't stop anybody from trying to organise anything .
Light..... End....... Tunnel
Is there a way we could advertise the boundaries being pushed with the f4r/ f7r b18ft engines??? surely Scoffs f4r conversion would attract other megane/clio owners if it was more publicly known that it was infact there engine? maybe pay for Scoffs membership to other clubs and have it plastered on there pages?
Maybe our advert in PFC could include other variants more?
turned in an interesting thread with productful comments. i dont know how we could generate more interest though. as lee mentioned there is already set clubs for set cars, although some members to overlap. i guess its the knowledge base which may sway people to or from the club?
i've been on here a while but as there wasn't much info on here when i bought a 21 so i joined up on 21toc. if people ask questions about them on either club i'll do my best to answer, as do other 21toc members but essentially if you seach the net, thats the club that pops up the most, so naturally the one people will choose when looking for a 21 turbo forum. as its a quiet club with sometimes no new posts for a few days i do find myself checking on here alot more.
saying that, i didnt join cliosport when i had my 172. from what i have heard the forum is free which can bring in non enthusiasts and quick money maker rip offs, the majority of members prefer show and shine events so wont attend if the forcast is drizzle and i presume the tuned up owners are more likely to be on here than there anyway as they cant be bothered with the above??
i suppose in that respect its getting a decent turnout for a club stand from a mixture of owners cars at events where new potential members could be at (prob the events that alot of us have stopped going to, shall they be generalised as ali g events?) amongst many car, things like scoff's rwd, duncan's 20vt, blockie's vr6 clio i would have thought would be interesting to most car bods to show what owners are doing, yet scoff's 172t, robbie and russels 16vt etc show that the club is keeping with the times with modern tuning (like 20vt mk1 golfs)
basically, is the club better off attending larger events/shows rather than just exclusive pod/track days (which i think we prefer?)
If the club wants to market itself, then it should attend these shows, even if the people doing so don't want to.
However, that not how it goes.
We'd perhaps need to pay people to go to those specifically to market this club.
Haz, you only mentioned about 5 people though. They would have to go to everything and that's not realistic. If there were 50 or 100 members with cars like that then that could work.
There's nice bit of marketing on the home page now. A photo slide show. https://www.rtoc.org/home.php I post a link for those that have forgotten there is a home page and how to navigate to it
I guess Big Steve did that??
thats kind of my point though, if current members arent interested in these sort of events, would we be trying to recuit members that wont gel with current ones causing the numbers to stay the same?
i only mentioned a few to make my point, there's a good few crazy cars on here, but mainly gtt's. how could you tempt in say a handful of twingo turbo owners to join rather than starting up their exclusive club? is having the widest knowledge enough? i guess once there's a few of each model that will draw in other enthusiasts as the club to be in but unless some members move onto newer cars like the megane 225's etc how will they know we're here? i still meet gtt owners that dont know, or not interested in joining rtoc, or other forums.
how about a voucher scheme regards membership. say its £20. as a member you can print off 'become a member' leaflets which you can add your id too. upon a new member registering, using that id code you recive a £2 discount on your next renewal. invite 10 new members and your renewal is free. basic and probably a pain to the orgainisers of this, and some couldn't be bothered, but, everyone can do their bit and invite an array of renault cars??
Great topic guys
One thing I think that is worth mentioning is the average age of our membership, most are in a similar boat to me, when they first joined they maybe didn't have kids/house/mrs and all the responsibility that comes with these things.
Many of our long standing most contributing members are all over 30, most people that age and older naturally don't have a huge amount of time to go to all manner of events.
I personally think the membership will naturally decrease in numbers as both our cars and ourselves get older. For me to keep the club alive and growing we need to try and tap into the younger area of the car scene as this is in my eyes is where the future lies.
Many of us have years of experience of tuning/playing with cars and it's this msg that needs to be given out to the young un's, we need to look at the major selling points of the club and use them to our advantage when it comes to attracting new blood.
For me personally I owe a great deal to this club and it's vast array of info and members and from joining 8 years ago it's been a long and eventfull journy that I hope will continue for years to come. I have made some great friends and had some great times over the years. For me this is what car clubs are all about.
Maybe fliers at these events giving a large discount to membership say 5-10 pounds a few idiots may join but also a few genuine enthusiasts may join. Without necessarily owning a renturb. Which with a cheap renewal should bump up members and they'l help get the word out about our knowledge base?
I think flyers are a very good idea, reps could take them to all events to distribute and promote the club. We did have some many moons ago and I always kept them in my car. I guess they were lost when the website blew up.
We need more 'active' commitee members/reps to take anything forward. There's a lot of people on her who like to post/talk alot and some have very good ideas. Can these people not offer to help in some way? (practically)
Membership costs need looking into/reviewing
Promoting the club is in my opinion first step to getting people's interest in the RTOC scene and to be honest theres one sure way of getting that attention. We drive some fine cars between us within the club and many members of the public from young to old give us the thumbs up. Theres is your perfect opportunity to show case what we are, all down to the signage and those many argue about the idea resurrecting old stickers or modifying our present. It seems simple to me get our members with what ever Renault turbo they drive to get the signage on, if its time to change or modify signage in the RTOC banner then I'll be first to pay and fly a banner or two.
I think the old car derived logo is so catchy, with the 5 gt being the routes of what the club started from and transpose the the current RTOC into it.
This is my own opinion, but the opportunity is here with end season coming with many cars stored away and so why don't we come out next season with a show unity.
Anyway that's my rambling over!
In light of a point raised regarding membership fee's, I have seen it suggested some where before, but perhaps running two membership packs may attract a few more people!. Some thing like,
Gold membership pack: full forums and website access, club shop discount, events discount ... In other words the whole shabang!. For your usual £25 and £10 renewal fee.
Silver membership: website and forum access, - no discount entitlements from shop or organised events, or group buys!. For £10 a year with the option of a full upgrade to gold membership and full entitlements for the additional £15
This would maybe draw in a few more people that are maybe not totally committed to doing the RR days , club days/meets and etc, or can not financially commit to these type of days!, or even wish not to benefit from the club offers. This option may also profit RTOC by luring in the % of people that slip through the nets by only owning renault turbos for small periods of time, say like ..6 months, then there interest fizzles out so they naturally sell it on, to the next guy who repeats the cycle . For some one with out long term plans £25 doesn't appeal, maybe £10 would be?!.
Does the club need to expand ? Each attractive car, all be it a classic or a current car, has more or less an online club or forum of some sort specifically designed for them !. the young generation I speak to, half them haven't even heard of the 5 Gtt let alone the other available turbo renaults. So maybe sticking to our current set up isn't so bad! Unfortunately for the senior members of the club who have been around a long time the club may have reached its peak along time ago, because sadly as quick as the years go by as do the shorting number of these cars on the road. This meaning less available cars for new potential owners! Leading into less recruitment for RTOC... But it gives the club an opportunity to gather its active members and bring the club in closer!
Sorry if you thinking am talking dirt, but just an idea?.
Getting membership pack might be an idea........I joined ages ago and I gave up on asking for one!!!
Getting membership pack might be an idea........I joined ages ago and I gave up on asking for one!!!
Pm alex, he is now in charge of membership packs and has been very reliable
Please Can I ask who is running the club shop?. I made some purchases last week and haven't Recieved them as of yet?!
The running of the shop has been changing hands so there's been a delay while everything is swapping over but should be back to normal soon
Getting on for one of the most popular threads in recent times at this rate
You've goto remember the age of our cars now, I've just taken 3 new apprentices on and when one of them told me their date of birth was 1995 i was blown away... To me 1995 is an M reg which isn't that old... When I asked him if he knew what a Renault 5 was he looked at me gone out.
For this club to have survived as long as it has shows just how dedicated the core members are. Does the club need to grow? Do we need to attract young members? or do we just need some new blood in to give us a boost. Like Phil Says we're all getting on a bit, we have houses, wives, kids & responsibilities at work, time is precious and the car club is just a hobby and has to take a back seat.
Mart, I would love to see you on the committee taking the club forward, you have some good ideas and seem keen to make things happen. Why not get involved in the promotion of the club?
http://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?q=twingo+turbo
According to this there are less than 100 UK Twingo-turbo's.
That's not going to expand this club much even if we did get them all!
Rare though. Collectible or rubbish?
I agree. Mart doing promotional stuff is a good idea.
We still need to agree on what type of club we want promoting though first.
- The current one that caters mainly for low and mainly dwindling numbers of certain models?
- Or one that has decided to change it's scope (whichever way that is)?
I went through PayPal and counted up the member numbers for the last 2¾ years.
To view what effect the change in membership fee had I'd have to go a further few years but I found the graph Miller did of the reduction in number new joiners vs. fee change.
The graph is from 2006 / 2007 showing the members numbers drop as the fee rose, though the income remained about the same. The new joiners in 2010 / 2011 are about half that of 2007.
Sep 2012
Renewal = 27
join = 16
Aug 2012
Renewal = 20
join = 15
Jul 2012
Renewal = 28
join = 19
Jun 2012
Renewal = 34
join = 22
May 2012
Renewal = 19
join = 21
Apr 2012
Renewal = 26
join = 18
Mar 2012
Renewal = 25
join = 16
Feb 2012
Renewal = 20
join = 24
Jan 2012
Renewal = 22
join = 17
Dec 2011
Renewal = 25
join = 18
Nov 2011
Renewal = 22
join = 16
Oct 2011
Renewal = 25
join = 16
Sep 2011
Renewal = 30
join = 12
Aug 2011
Renewal = 26
join = 8
Jul 2011
Renewal = 25
join = 17
Jun 2011
Renewal = 28
join = 19
May 2011
Renewal = 36
join = 17
Apr 2011
Renewal = 27
join = 23
Mar 2011
Renewal = 27
join = 14
Feb 2011
Renewal = 20
join = 16
Jan 2011
Renewal = 32
join = 15
Dec 2010
Renewal = 33
join = 11
Nov 2010
Renewal = 20
join = 13
Oct 2010
Renewal = 27
join = 21
Sep 2010
Renewal = 25
join = 12
Aug 2010
Renewal = 33
join = 20
Jul 2010
Renewal = 36
join = 22
Jun 2010
Renewal = 21
join = 22
May 2010
Renewal = 29
join = 26
Apr 2010
Renewal = 24
join = 14
Mar 2010
Renewal = 23
join = 27
Feb 2010
Renewal = 25
join = 25
Jan 2010
Renewal = 32
join = 22
= 389 members joined or renewed so far in first 9 months of 2012 ÷3*4=519
R = 221 ÷3*4=295
J = 168 ÷3*4=224
= 514 members joined or renewed in 2011
R = 323
J = 191
= 563 members joined or renewed in 2010
R = 328
J = 235
A steady reduction in renewals; maybe 7% less in 2012.
Great chart Ian.
So we have stable income despite falling member numbers? Where is the money going? There's less of us to spend it on! Lol. Rhetorical.
This year looks like we'll have the same club numbers as last year. 500 is a good round number to work with when considering event attendance and indeed the club's future.
How many people/Renaults turned up to the ND though? 100-125 or so? 1 in 5 isn't a great result tbh, not sure what that says.
That's the exact reason why I want to get my hands on the old-style stickers. Bit like having the 'Elf' and 'There's More to Life With Renault' in the back window and the 'RAC' tax disc holder in the front...bit of a retro trip down memory lane
That's the exact reason why I want to get my hands on the old-style stickers. Bit like having the 'Elf' and 'There's More to Life With Renault' in the back window and the 'RAC' tax disc holder in the front...bit of a retro trip down memory lane
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