For a couple of years now, W5HRC has used the website Meetup.com for planning and scheduling our events. Recently the club leadership voted to not renew our subscription for a variety of reasons. A couple of reasons are this, primarily the cost over the past year has doubled. We saw tremendous value in Meetup when the cost was just $90 a year.
Last year, they doubled their prices to $180 for a 12 month term. In order for us to justify the expense, our cost-to-member/new member rate must be at a point where we are not losing money or just throwing around money as an attempt to grow. Meetup.com did not provide this over the past year, and no longer provides the benefit it once did.
You may have noticed if you are a Meetup.com user, the W5HRC group has been removed. This is not a problem for those that want to participate with the club, because we have, for the past year, been using other methods for sign-ups for our club events. We will continue to do this. This allows us to host events, have anyone that wants to participate, participate, without the need for creating an account on a third-party website. Your information is now all internal, self hosted, and secure. We have a set of online forms that we have been using lately that allows us to more efficiently use whatever data we need as hosts.
There is a second reason we have now left Meetup. We are a club of diversity. We have people from all backgrounds and walks of life, all ages, young to old. Our membership is made up an incredible group of individuals, new Hams to those that have been one for 50+ years. Regardless of your personal feelings of the political world, W5HRC is not a club that promotes civil disobedience. We do not promote any criminal activity. With that said, Meetup has begun a protest movement under the name #Resist. You have a right to protest, and we support your right to do it, but you can turn on the news just about any day and see the ongoing #Resist protest that frequently turn to destructive riots. Many of these groups are made up of what have been called professional protesters or professional anarchist.
We will continue to be a club of service. We serve the City of Hurst and surrounding neighboring cities, Tarrant County RACES and other events in the area. We can have our personal opinions towards politics or other social issues, but the club as an organization will remain neutral due to being a community service club.
Meetup data will be removed from our website but for every event we used Meetup for, an alternate sign-up method has and will continue to be provided. We may find other social calendar websites to use at a later date, but that is an area to be explored in the future.