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Announcing BMW MOA 2021 Grand Coddiwomple!

kbasa said:
Hint: The vast majority of members apparently don't care about high mileage heroes any more than most riders give a crap about quarter mile times for bikes anymore. Mileage survey results ought to show that sentiment given the utter lack of participation across that vast, vast majority of members. Is it even 5%?

It's nice and all, but mileage != to motorcycling fulfillment anymore than a smorgasbord or Golden Corral is indicative, by their quantity, of a tasty meal.

I look at all the folks I work with in their 30s and 40s - our target demographic if we want this club to survive - and they just don't have time to ride significant distances or spend a week riding to a rally given current employment reality. The MOA, right now, has little to offer someone that doesn't pursue big miles or doesn't want to go sit in a fairgrounds once a year with a bunch of old farts listening their parents' old fogey music. The weekend getaways are great, but that's an idea from back when I was on the board in 2010. What's the next item that will bring members onboard? Is there one?

Is this even under discussion at the board level? It's hard for me to tell, as a member. Right now, it feels like when it comes to member benefits, we have weekend getaways, the rally, a magazine, and a raffle and that's about it. I'm not counting IG or FB because it's not apparent to me that we actually use that to recruit or that those outlets have actually realized member attraction and growth. Coddywhatever is a nice idea - in a time when there's not a pandemic, anyway - but what else does the club offer? Local route sharing? Local tech days? Local group rides? Any of this coordinated with local clubs might help drive membership in both.


how long until some snarly mod comes along and quotes me "for posterity?" :ha

The club is stuck again and doesn't know what to offer its members in exchange for their membership dollar. It feels like we have some folks that haven't worked in a decade or two trying to understand the reality of folks 30 years their junior, with predictable results.

IMHO, now that I've participated in two car clubs that have chapters, I think it's a far better structure. The national organization provides dollars to the chapters, along with portions of membership funds so that all clubs can put events on. My Porsche Club of America chapter, Redwood Region, runs concours events, runs a TSD rally school, teaches car judging, runs autocross and track events, runs "tours" that are like rallies, runs "drives" that are a one day event, etc. There are endless opportunities for me to socialize with my fellow enthusiasts in a bunch of different ways.

Where is the BMW motorcycle equivalent offered by the national club, that will encourage me to get on my motorcycle and meet new fellow enthusiasts? While I like the NorCal club, I'm all done camping. So what's my benefit from MOA membership here beyond a magazine and a rally that I'm probably not going to if I have to cross the plains again?

Anybody got any plans for changing that? Until we put "benefit" in people's hands in exchange for the membership money, this club will continue to shrink. What's the retention rate on new members now? I presume that's been analyzed. If people are churning, are we arranging interviews with non-renewals?

Sorry to derail your thread, Greg, but this strikes me as about as effective as all that money we spent on Camp Gears, thinking if we recruited teens, we might be able to get new members into their grandparents' club.
Click to expand...

I honestly do not have the energy to response to all the statements in this rank but will simply say ... I have been a member of the MOA since I bought my first BMW in 2000 and having been a member of various other Brand specific Motorcycle clubs (Honda Riders, GTOC, RSTAR, etc.) all of which are GONE I have found the MOA to be a great resource. I love attending the National Rally and even when working (I have only been retired for 4 years) I would attend any National Rally within about 1000 or so miles of my home. So moving the rally around really helped me out and allowed me to see new places and roads. Now that I am retired I plan on attending every National event and I am usually joined my my WORKING riding buddies! High mileage?? Yep ... I enjoy reading all the High Mileage stories and how folks were able to get those miles. About 2 years ago I got my 100,000 mile award and was excited to make that "baby" milestone and hope to get 200K and maybe 300K before I have to stop riding. The cost of membership and the value you get IMHO is pretty good especially if you up it for the Platinum level. And what about getting up to $750 off a new BMW! I have used that benefit twice.

Do we need to keep growing ... you bet! But does the MOA currently suck ... NOT AT ALL! Of course this is just my experience and as always YMMV !!

Oh .. and I enjoyed the Coddiwomple and plan on doing it again. It truly gave me a reason to ride to new places.
 
... 49er's capture a loss yesterday to a state team down south and he goes cod'e-womp on the Coddiwomple!
 
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flyhi2cfar said:
... 49er's capture a loss yesterday to the state team down south and he goes cod'e-womp on the Coddiwomple!
Click to expand...

Yeah. A great game, but you know how it goes. "Beat LA" is a thing, even when I lived in and especially when I lived in Boston. :ha

Nah. I think that I'm kind of disappointed that we haven't had much growth in product deliverables to members that put them together with each other. I look at my car club and I look at my bike club and it makes me sad that my bike club is kinda stuck. If one of the mods wants to peel this off to a new thread, that's probably a good idea.

If you live where your local club doesn't do stuff you like to do or it's full of old farts that don't ride anymore or it's just a GS club and you ride an S1000, local club experiences can vary widely. I see the chapter organizational structure that both PCA and the BMW CCA employ as being more effective in normalizing delivery of club activities across the nation. There are resources at the national level that train local clubs to standard Concours judging standards or TSD rallies or how to set up an Autocross or club Track Day or any of a variety of activities. I bought a Boxster. I'm going to a track day with it. I've already been to a club concours, a hangout at the Sonoma town square, and have had the opportunity to attend any number of "drives" where a group meets and takes a briskish drive to some spot for a barbecue or something a couple hours away. All PCA clubs seem to do this kind of thing and their calendars are filled with social, driving and learning opportunities.

We have opportunities I don't think we see because we are, as a club, highly homogenous in our riding objectives. For a big chunk of the club, motorcycling means riding and camping. This will necessarily limit the club's appeal to folks that want to experience more of the BMW experience. Well, now we have GS, R18, S1000RR, R9Ts, big touring bikes, little touring bikes and variations of every BMW niche in a variety of ccs. And despite this spread in the BMW rider experience, we haven't expanded our "club deliverables" to match the reality of BMW riding experiences available now.

I'm glad we had the Coddiwomple. Greg, good idea. If it puts people on their bikes, I'm for it.

But we only went deeper on a market we've been in since the club was founded.

Mods, feel free to peel these posts out into a new thread if that's appropriate.
 
I do see your point Dave, as my interests relate to similar "hobby" activities.
It's true with my local Mini auto Club, and even the aviation related Warbirds/EAA affiliation I participate in.

But there's a very significant difference between these and our MOA.
Especially when using the BMW CCA or the Porsche CCA as examples...
membership numbers equal deep pockets for the organizations.

John
 
flyhi2cfar said:
I do see your point Dave, as my interests relate to similar "hobby" activities.
It's true with my local Mini auto Club, and even the aviation related Warbirds/EAA affiliation I participate in.

But there's a very significant difference between these and our MOA.
Especially when using the BMW CCA or the Porsche CCA as examples...
membership numbers equal deep pockets for the organizations.

John
Click to expand...

It's the classic business problem, right? How do we get more customers using what we have? If you do it right, it's like a big flywheel and more members means more money, which means more offerings, which attracts new members and around we go again.

I went through this with the YBs 25 years ago when we grew from 40 members to 600 in a couple years and, as a result, had the ability to do things like start Euro Day at the Larz Anderson Museum, fire up a rally and pretty much offer activities year round for members to get together with their bikes.

So we started with some basic offerings - mostly a fleshed out calendar with something to do every month, often two or three opportunities, and that got people on board - off we went.

One of the most difficult parts of a local club is trying to come up with new activities that we can afford to run. So why not help local clubs build a sort of book of activities they can pull from to drive member engagement?

I think the other thing is that in those clubs, there's a direct funnel to drive members down to the local club from the national club, as well as funding shared with the local charters. When I signed up for CCA or PCA, i had no choice and was enrolled in a local chapter. It's very, very different in terms of a membership experience when the nation club is supporting and proscribing the local charters' standards.
 
kbasa said:
I think the other thing is that in those clubs, there's a direct funnel to drive members down to the local club from the national club, as well as funding shared with the local charters. When I signed up for CCA or PCA, i had no choice and was enrolled in a local chapter. It's very, very different in terms of a membership experience when the nation club is supporting and proscribing the local charters' standards.
Click to expand...

The BMW MOA has suffered from or benefited from its cussed independence from the very start. A classic case of "nobody can tell us what to do" about even the smallest and most inconsequential things. A hands-off aloof relationship with Butler and Smith and then BMWNA. "Chartering" but little else with the local clubs. Members in BMW MOA not in the local club in their same locale, and members in local clubs not in the BMW MOA. No real responsibilities for local clubs except to have ten BMW MOA members. The national club tried to offer liability insurance for local clubs for a year or two and then decided the clubs should affiliate with the AMA because they could get a better deal on rally insurance that way. Those relationships have waxed and waned over the years driven by differing personalities of the Officers and Board members, but have for the most part remained aloof from many beneficial relationships.
 
Results

Nice to see who won the drawing prizes. Where do we see the results? At least maybe the top 25 points achievers so one can have a benchmark of how they did. TIA

J Frick
Cincinnati, OH
 
Just read Feb ON magazine and it said others who completed the Coddiwomple with 300 or more points "received" a pin and Cert of Completion. Funny, I haven't seen it, anyone else?
 
60aviator said:
Just read Feb ON magazine and it said others who completed the Coddiwomple with 300 or more points "received" a pin and Cert of Completion. Funny, I haven't seen it, anyone else?
Click to expand...

That "received" should be correct by now, but with the 45-day lead time for Owners News article submissions, and this being our first time through, we didn't realize that there would be a delay in mailing the certificates, due to a delay in getting pins. All has been ordered for a while, and although I don't have an ETA, "as soon as we can" is a good estimate.
 
PGlaves said:
Everybody needs to chill. This is supposed to be fun. Give the volunteers a break, please.
Click to expand...

Paul, I/we appreciate the support, but people have a right to ask questions. Due to the processing backlog and cumbersome process we used in 2021 it took far longer to wrap up the 2021 event then we planned. Many of the core team had not done something like this before, so went through a steep learning curve. Bottom line is that we didn't get things done/published/counted/sent as soon as we wanted or it was reasonable to expect.

However, lessons have been learned, some changes are being made in the submission/processing for 2022, so we will do better. For one, there will be far better email communication with the participants. And there will be more improvements for 2023. The good news is that registrations are running way ahead of last year at this time - close to (or perhaps just over) 300 as of today.
 
Class Act

GREGFEELER said:
That "received" should be correct by now, but with the 45-day lead time for Owners News article submissions, and this being our first time through, we didn't realize that there would be a delay in mailing the certificates, due to a delay in getting pins. All has been ordered for a while, and although I don't have an ETA, "as soon as we can" is a good estimate.
Click to expand...

Thanks for answering the question and like always with class.
 
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