The Power of NBG Member Numbers
As we are hire staff, as I showed you in the chapter “If money were no more no object”, on a parallel track, we need to initiate a membership campaign that will grow our numbers. This is important for many reasons. To begin, it gives authority to our effort - it establishes us us as a force to be reckoned with.
When we can say we are organization of 25,000 members the reception we will get from people we are working with will continue to improve as we increase our numbers to the hundreds of thousands and quite realistically since we are a national organization, to millions of associates. People listen when they become aware that you are a part of an organization made up of large numbers of people.
It will give us leverage with city officials and transportation directors. It will be easier for us to have our needs met with whatever problem we are trying to solve. It will attract people, causes and organizations that come to us for our approval or assessment of their own programs or efforts. It will make us the big kid on the block who whenever we speak, people will turn their hearing up. It will also give us much authority when we are seeking another round of investment funding. To be able to show our size will have a great influence on potential stakeholders.
Having a large membership body will make us a juggernaut, as in time, we will take on the significance of being a small country. Businesses and their marketers will come to us for words of testimony.
Nor is this an unrealistic thought. Most everyone can or does ride a bicycle. Most everyone wants the quality of life benefits that will result from our National Bicycle Greenway and the example it will set for all the other cities in America. Our effort cuts across race, gender and age lines. With but the exception of the rare antisocial individual committed to destroying society, most everyone wants to make it easier for each of us to move about under our own power - which by extension is the benefit the NBG will bring about.