Q: "I want to start a new ferret club...." "our club is having problems...
    any advice?"
 
A: Set fire to your body hair in an attempt to prepare yourself for the
   future hassles.
 
I've seen just about every type of club you can imagine and have even
earned a Silver Beaver in Scouting for creating "clubs." Rather than
telling you what you SHOULD do, which is more or less impossible, let me
mention some things you SHOULD NOT do.
 
1. DO NOT BECOME A FASCIST STATE: Regardless of your personal culture,
make the club as democratic as possible.  Flush those ideas that the
membership can vote only for the officers nominated by committee; it is
frequently perceived as an attempt to keep specific people in power.  Why
that perception?  Because it does.  Look at any club with such a power
hierarchy and you will see the same faces year after year after year.
Trust your membership; they are not stupid.  If you remove their only
opportunity for making a statement about leadership, you will lose them.
I belong to six different profession scientific organizations, and ALL
have direct nomination and leadership voting.
 
2. DO NOT BECOME A CULT CLUB: "Join this club; *I* am a member!" isn't a
good enough reason to start a club.  A club is a sacred trust, with goals
and public awareness and lots of other political babble, so you have a deep
responsibility not to start something you can't finish or what would not be
supported in the community.  Look at the size of your community; based on
observations and published data, clubs drawing from a population of
millions can expect 50 or less ACTIVE members, or about 30 or so families.
Some are a little better, some worse and even the so-called "national'
clubs have a lot less active members than you would expect.  As the
population decreases, so does the potential membership, and small cities of
about 100,000 have clubs with less than 20 ACTIVE members comprising about
a dozen or so families.  The REAL problem is, the smaller the club, the
more work per individual.  Without great care, small clubs tend to fail as
members quit as they burn out or perceive they are treated unfairly.  This
is especially true with Cult Clubs, those built around the popularity of a
specific person.  If your community is small, leave the club informal
UNLESS you can build a power and financial base FIRST.
 
3. NEVER IGNORE THE MEMBERSHIP: A single dissatisfied person has the
potential of creating a wasteland where a club used to be.  It is the DUTY
of club officers to listen to the membership; you, after all, represent
them.  If your club covers a wide geographic region and some areas have
less active members than others, there will be a tendency to outvote them
in regional disputes.  If this is allowed to happen too frequently, the
club will eventually fragment, harming both sides and the ferrets in the
middle.  The quickest way to destroy a club is for one group from one area
to always outvote another group from another area.  If you notice this in
your club, better start dividing the stationary now.  A solution could be
to "normalize" the vote, so areas with small populations feel they have an
equal chance of being heard as the larger population areas.  This can be
done by giving equal numbers of votes to each region in important disputes,
to be divided as each region chooses.
 
4. NEVER CREATE A CLUB WITHOUT PURPOSE: A club without purpose is a boat
without rudder, sail, spars or rigging.  If all you want is a social club,
then remain an informal meeting.  if you want to educate, rescue, shelter,
or better public awareness, then form a club for those exact reasons.  Put
those reasons in your constitution.  Work towards them.  If leaders lose
sight of them or flounder, cut bait and get more.  A club is NEVER the
leadership; it is ALWAYS the members.
 
5. NEVER DO EVERYTHING: A membership requires value and tasks.  People are
there to help; the greatest complaint of dissatisfied membership is they
have nothing to do.  Put them to work; remember, they are there to help.
Remember, a leader LEADS; they don't necessarily do all the work.  If your
president and vice president are doing more than about 20% of the tasks,
they are doing too much and cannot be effective leaders.
 
I hope this helps.  This may sound corny, but I suggest you get a
Scoutmaster's Handbook and read the leadership portion.  I discovered by
the time I won my 3rd Woodbadge bead that anyone can be a good leader if
they follow a few rules.  And all those rules can be boiled down to a
leader listening and respecting the values and opinions of the membership.
Trust the membership, because that is how a leader leads.
 
Bob C and 15 Mo' Ferret Followers
[Posted in FML issue 3219]