Klystron wrote:

Once upon a time, the ARRL was able to pay its bills with dues
income, magazine sales and book sales. The fact that is must now resort
to such "creative" fundraising simply underlines the fact that it is
gradually but inexorably moving toward extinction.

That is a possible conclusion, but I'm not reading it that way.



As an example of a similar experience, when our club needed to raise
money for a new repeater, it was something outside of regular dues, as
well as being expensive and a pretty good way of emptying the treasury.

So we had a special fund raising project. People were asked to donate
money to the repeater fund. Those who donated something like 100 dollars
or more were given a coffee mug with a nice club logo on it. We got a
new repeater.

The really interesting thing is that the repeater was open to all, even
those who didn't contribute a penny to it, or thought it was a bad idea
that the club should own a repeater, or that the old repeater that took
so much maintenance - not by them of course - was still usable.

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -