Clubs struggle to maintain active membership

March 30, 2015 — by Emily Chen and Ami Nachiappan

Since the beginning of the school year, about 17 of the 28 clubs surveyed by the Falcon have experienced a decrease in membership.

Many clubs have had trouble sparking an interest and recruiting club members, though the recent Club Rush helped raise money.

Senior Alex Yeh, co-president of Web Design Club, stood on top of his Club Day table on Sept. 26, waving and shouting in effort to recruit as many members as possible.

Holding posters that featured portfolios of creative websites and bold, hand-drawn logos of HTML, CSS, and JS — languages that the club often uses to create websites — Yeh and his fellow members were eager to see new members join their club. Though he had bags of assorted candy to pass out, he was thrilled to have 50 new members sign up for his club.

Fast forward to six months, and only eight active members remain. The excitement Yeh felt last fall has faded.

“We gained only a couple members [this year] in addition to the members who have stuck with the club the years before,” he said.

Since the beginning of the school year, about 17 of the 28 clubs surveyed by the Falcon have experienced a decrease in membership.

Many clubs have had trouble sparking an interest and recruiting club members, though the recent Club Rush helped raise money.

According to sophomore Jane Oberhauser, some students sometimes don’t sign up for clubs because they would rather spend their lunch doing other activities such as completing homework or hanging out with friends.

“[A club] would have to be really interesting enough to make up for the time commitment,” she said.

Throughout the year, many clubs witness a decline in active members at regular meetings and events, and it is left to the few officers to decide how to keep the club going. By the end of the year, many have become virtually nonexistent. This year, three have been cut by ASB so far due to lack of advisers, meetings and overall participation.  

Sophomore June Kim, co-president of California Scholarship Federation (CSF), a club that focuses on promoting and completing community service,  feels her club has struggled to gain participation and commitment from members.

“Most people signed up for our club for the food or the slight interest they had,” she said.

This semester, CSF co-presidents sophomores June and Ally Kim plan on incorporating bonding activities into meetings and working on service projects for the Saratoga community. One proposed idea is a school-wide easter egg hunt.

According to Ally, the CSF club has been  revived from last semester due to “a lack of spirit and determination among officers and members altogether [because of] busy [schedules].”

Fewer numbers of people started attending meetings, and that led to an eventual end to meetings, Ally said.

“At one point, the club just ceased to be a club,” she said.

In order to gain more members, CSF wants to organize activities that spark interest and shift the focus from counting hours to having fun and enjoying community service.

“I want CSF to be able to lead change in campus, and seeing the past of CSF, I thought that with only a little boost of motivation, we would be able to actively participate in bettering our own community,” Ally said.

Even with a lack of active members, officers still hope that new students will join the club. Some clubs like FBLA keep the same Facebook and email list from Club Day just to keep their potential member base updated on the activities they can come to.

The decline in club activity results from students’ desire to try a little bit of everything, according to Kim.

“Students have trouble finding what they are passionate about so they join clubs to see what they are interested in,”  he said. “By second semester, each student finds the clubs that match their interests.”

Or, as many club leaders have discovered, none at all.

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