Good club - I think Milwaukee Bonsai Society, Milwaukee Wisconsin is a good example. Another good example is Midwest Bonsai Society, Chicago area, meeting at CBG in Glencoe, IL. Both are good clubs. All clubs have there ups and downs, Chicago seems to be on a steady trend up trend after a rough patch a dozen years ago. Milwaukee is way up in my opinion, hopefully the ''down'' won't come for another decade.
http://www.milwaukeebonsai.org/index.html
http://www.midwestbonsai.org/
No matter the club, no matter 50 members or 500 members, it always seems the same 8 to 16 people do all the organizing and running of the club. This is not avoidable, it is human nature.
An active core membership that tries to have something happening every month beyond just a ''meeting''. The board of directors, or executive committee needs to keep an eye to make sure all the core members are inclusive in their approach to people, constantly try to bring different, new or less experienced people in on projects. Most boards draw from the over 55 years old crowd, we tend to have more time, I'm proud to say Milwaukee now has a board member who is under 35 years old. Yes. Some diversity. Recently had a contest to see if everyone on the board could name 3 people each that had only been in the club less than 2 years. Not all could, but the majority could. Key is, encourage your core people to mingle. Get to know people. You don't have to know everyone, but try to know more than just the few you tend to ''hang out'' with.
Term limits - details may vary, but by term limiting, you force the core to keep recruiting new to fill slots. For Milwaukee, we term limit most slots at 4 years, and 2 years for president. Term limits are not always necessary, and if you find a good treasurer, it is real tempting to keep them on as long as possible.
Milwaukee has a goal of spending at least 55% of the membership dues income on bringing in speakers and guest artists. The thought is that speakers and artists are what the membership wants, and the dues are the membership's money, try to give our members a good return. Of course there are other expenses, like room rental, club supplies, etc. Some long established clubs that have hosted MABA and ABS events keep a ''war chest'', a fairly hefty reserve fund to serve as seed money for the next event. What can happen is that a club board, or exec committee can get in a penny pinching mind set trying to rebuild the reserve fund for the next event at the expense of providing quality speakers and interesting programs for the membership. Our 55% goal is to counter-act this tendency. Milwaukee will be hosting the 2020 MABA convention, so this is why the discussion occurred. The average member doesn't want to see the same ''old timer'' get up at a meeting an rehash the same thing he or she had said at three other meetings that year and call it a ''program''. Its especially irritating if you realize the ''old timer'' hasn't read a book in 50 years, or is at all familiar with the newer, more modern approaches to bonsai utilizing modern horticultural science. I have been that old timer, I know how bad it can get. Yep, garden topsoil & granite grit, yep, that still is the best thing to pot yer banzai trees in. (joking, just joking).
All the activities the Milwaukee club does are done with an eye toward improving the bonsai skills of all the members. We have events for the novice, for the intermediate, and for the advanced members. We want members at all levels to benefit and to learn from our guest artists, our workshops with guest artists, our workshops taught by our members, and any other activity the club comes up with. Education. Even the old timers (like myself) can learn new tricks.
We have had many artists in over the years, from Colin Lewis and Marty Schmallenberg in the last decade thru Matt Reel, Chris Baker and Austin Heitzman within the last 6 months. We try to have a variety of topics covered, Todd Schlafer is coming in June to talk conifers, spruce especially, in May we have David Kreutz to talk satsuki azalea. Jerry Meslick has recently been in covering ficus & tropicals. We try mix up the topics.
Have a club mentor, a guest artist, brought in several times a year for a multi-year contract. This club mentor, only does one regular meeting program a year, but will do 3 workshops a year, sort of a Master class series, a group of 6 to 8 students share the artist for a day, and do this 3 times a year, this way the students will see the artist spring, summer, autumn, and can keep bringing the same handful of trees to the workshops to experience the full round of seasonal work on a tree, at the appropriate time for the tree. Milwaukee first experimented with this with Ted Mattson being our club sensei, or teacher. Ted came to town 3 times a year, taught group workshops 2 days each visit and had a private session or two on subsequent days. This began around 2006 or so, and ran for at least 6 years. A private study group has had Ted coming in for another 6 years past the original 6. Ted is still a regular here in MIlwaukee with close friendships with quite a few of the members. Most recently Peter Tea is in year 5 of a 6 year arrangement. So students are getting to learn from Peter too. The students who take the workshop agree to the same 3 year agreement that the artist does, so these students get the full benefit of a multiyear cycle of instruction from the same artist. You can have the artist help you evaluate the responses your trees have made to things you have done. Very useful. This is not cheap, but if you do group workshops a typical artists fee of around $400 per 8 hours teaching can be split between 4 to 8 students, all meet at a location and each person gets a turn, usually 10 minutes to 30 minutes per turn, going round the group until everyone has their time in. Getting to see and listen while the artist is with a different student and you are working on your own tree is a great benefit. It is a good system. If the club uses the mentor for a club program then the club picks up the travel. Otherwise the students also split the travel expenses. Arrangements vary. But it is very do-able. A good model for study groups too.
Milwaukee membership held a fund raiser, receiving some corporate money, and a seed grant that matched the money we raised, all to endow a separate entity, the MBF, to maintain a permanent bonsai collection and exhibit. The Milwaukee Bonsai Foundation partnered with the Lynden Sculpture Garden and now there is a pavilion and display area housing the permanent bonsai collection. It is wildly creative, designed to have open views of the sculpture park as you look at the bonsai. No walled in garden, it was really creative, put it on your destination list next time to are near Milwaukee. Volunteers do all the maintenance. Such a collection gives a sense of permanence to the local bonsai community. And having the collection at a sculpture park really highlights the artistic aspect of bonsai, displaying as art, and not just a horticultural craft.
So these are some ideas. Milwaukee only has about 150 to 180 members, and yet we have a lot going on. It can be done.
