Grow membership Task Force

The designated task force was decided to be:
Christian Lillieroos, Chair
Harold Jeffcoat
Linda Leaf
Rajul Sheth
Mitchell Seidenfeld, Elite athlete rep.
Joyce Grooms, Staff liaison

The main work of this task force is to propose suggestions to the USATT board of directors to increase the value of the membership to USATT and therefore attract a much larger portion of our national table tennis constituency to our organization.
The analysis was made that the current structure mainly attracts adult/middle age recreational tournament players, and the main value of being a member of USATT currently was only to be able to play USATT sanctioned recreational tournaments and be part of the USATT national rating system.

This task force was established to propose a new membership structure that provides value to more types of Table Tennis individuals and structures under the umbrella of USATT.
The missing groups that the new system needs to attract with improved value were recognized as:
a)    USATT club members that do not want to play USATT sanctioned tournaments
b)    USATT club members that only want to play individual club leagues
c)    USATT club members who want to play interclub team leagues.
d)    Table Tennis fans who want to follow the National team member’s progress and be part of Table Tennis activities.
e)    Juniors who want to play structured program and activities
f)    Basement recreational players (Ping Pong)
g)    High Performance athletes

Statistics that supports that the current USATT membership model (~9,000 members) do not attract much of our possible constituency:
a)    According to the latest research materials developed by the Sporting Goods Association of America, recreational Table Tennis (or Ping Pong) is enjoyed by more than 12 million Americans.
b)    It is estimated to be around 50,000 players in local USATT clubs in USA, and only about 20% of all USATT club members are members of USATT.
c)    In the last 15 years (approximately) 62,000 different individuals has at one time been a member of USATT. (Mike/Joyce please give the exact number)
The new membership system needs to have enough value to be able to attract all the above categories as members of USATT.

Important ingredients of the new USATT membership system

1. There is a sharp need to separate the membership in USATT from the right to play in tournaments. The fee for playing in tournament need to be an added fee on top of the membership in USATT
2. The focus of the memberships has to go away from being an individual based membership to a club based membership structure.
3. The value of the different types of memberships needs to be increased by adding mainly electronic services from our website with a member login benefit, and different types of newsletter services delivered by email.
4. By having a recognized USATT individual as well as team based league that will motivate the existence of more USATT clubs and add value to a club membership.