If you want your SPJ Garden to grow, you have to start planting the seeds now. And then you have to cultivate.

Case in point: Nate Taylor sent me an e-mail recently. Nate is a journalism student in his senior year at the University of Northern Colorado, where he also serves as editor of The Mirror, a student paper.

Last spring, Nate was a winner of the Helen Verba scholarship, which Colorado SPJ awards to a deserving print journalism student. The judges were impressed with the sports writing that Nate had done for the Mirror.

Later, I got to know Nate better after he joined Colorado SPJ while attending our Spring Training journalism conference in Fort Collins. He’s a bright young man and we’re glad he’s a member.

Nate sent me an e-mail recently asking if I knew of any jobs that he could apply to now that he’s getting ready to graduate this spring. In particular, he wondered if I know of anything in the Omaha area.

Jobs at the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post are pretty scarce right now. But despite the cutbacks and consolidation in our profession is undergoing, there are quite a few jobs out there at entry-level papers of the sort that Nate is applying to.

A quick Internet search on sites like JournalismJobs.Com, the Colorado Press Association and the SPJ job bank turned up several postings which I sent along to Nate. This took all of about five minutes.

Plus, in a bit of serendipity, the Denver Press Club agreed to judge the Omaha Press Club’s journalism contest. I e-mailed their president asking him to send Nate some contacts in Omaha, which he agreed to do.

I mention this exchange for a reason that goes to the heart of SPJ’s membership retention efforts.

The greatest amount of turnover in SPJ is our student membership, which currently accounts for about 2,000 of our 9,000 members.

Slowing the departure rate of students as they become young professionals is one of the keys to building SPJ membership in a lasting and significant way.

Nate didn’t say this, but I have a feeling that the little bit of help that SPJ is investing in helping him find a job will be a factor in his decision on whether to take advantage of SPJ’s current deal on post-graduate dues (three years for $72).

Ask yourself this question: is there a student like Nate in your chapter or in a nearby student chapter? Is your chapter doing anything proactive to help these students make the jump into our profession?

A little bit of help in enabling a student to land a job or internship can go a long way in terms of cultivating loyalty to SPJ over the long haul.

I told Nate that my help comes with an ulterior motive. If he does find a job in Omaha, I’m counting on him to help launch a chapter there. We currently have about 17 members in Nebraska, but no formal chapter.

A note to those 17 members, if any of you know of a job opening out there, please let Nate know. He can be reached at editor@uncmirror.com

SPJ By the numbers

Membership this week:            9,163

Membership one month ago:    9,245

Membership one year ago         9,040

Dear Gardener,

Our chapter has been doing a monthly mixer for over a year, but lately, it’s dying on the vine.

It started out so well. We had a good, diverse group of journalists. We even picked up a few new members.

But now we’re down to just a faithful few and it feels less like a mixer and more like a wake. Should we pull the plug?

Mixed Up in Mishawaka *

Dear Mixed,

Sounds like you might want to give it a rest and let your monthly social gatherings go fallow for awhile.

But try this: start planning now for a limited number of mixers in the spring.

First, don’t feel obligated to do them indefinitely until all the energy in the room is depleted. Make it a limited series of events so that you can keep it both fun and productive.

Next, consult with your local nightlife columnist or someone who is familiar with the newest hotspots in town, the places where everyone’ in the newsroom has been aching for an excuse to go.

Move your mixers around. Don’t stay in the same old spot. Use the series as a way to explore new places that no one in your chapter has seen so far.

Also try adding a few extras gizmos to your event.

For example, does your local newspaper have a video games columnist? Talk this person into coming to the mixer and bring some of the latest video games with him to play on the bar’s big screen TV.

In Denver, we tried this last year and got a crowd to try out “Guitar Hero” long before the game became the craze it is today.

Try trivia contests as well. In Denver, we found a guy who for a small fee will set up a Jeopardy-style screen, complete with music and buzzers.

Then we had journalists compose the questions from the more obscure details of local news stories. Categories included “Broncos”, “Crime and Punishment” and “Newspaper Movies”.

Chances are, there is a local trivia contest community in your town. Check in with them.

Another crowd magnet is to publicize a talk by a visiting journalist. For example, we drew a crowd with a CNN International executive who happened to be teaching a summer course at a local university.

Mixers should be fun, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a little content as well.

Try these techniques in a few months and see if you can revive your mixer by Spring. Mixers are a valuable tool for both growing membership and encouraging interaction among your members. But you have to be patient and give them time to grow.

* The letter-writer is fictional, but the situation described is real.

Garden Center tip of the week:

Puzzled why SPJ’s membership numbers seem to fluctuate so much from week to week? SPJ Membership coordinator Linda Hall recently clued us in to the reason why.

Typically, SPJ sends out bills to renewing members at the beginning of each month. Numbers go down when people don’t pay promptly. Thus membership appears down at the beginning of the month.

But as those members send their dues checks in, the numbers tend to float back up near the end of the month.

SPJ By the numbers

Membership this week: 9,040

Membership last month: 9,201

Membership last year: 8,753

Frequently when we discuss growing SPJ membership, the emphasis tends to be on recruiting new members. Not as much attention is paid to retaining members.

This is unfortunate. In many ways, keeping a member should be easier than finding a new one. After all, existing members already have said “yes” to SPJ once if not several times.

Yet, it is a sad fact that the average SPJ membership lasts about 2.5 years. If we could somehow lengthen that average and cut down on the “churn” of membership, our numbers really would begin to grow.

Retention, the other big “R”, was the subject of a recent meeting of the SPJ Membership Committee. We brainstormed and compared best practices when it comes to hanging onto our members. Here are a few of the ideas that came up:

Deep discounts for members

Bill Bleyer of Long Island SPJ said his chapter rewards existing members by providing deep discounts on the price of nearly every event that the chapter holds.

Celebrate loyalty

Currently, the national SPJ office mails out lapel pins to reward them for significant milestones such as their 15^th or 20^th year as a member.

Why not take this idea a step further on the local level? Find someway to celebrate a membership anniversary by offering them a free ticket to an upcoming event.

Or in the case of say a 40 or 50 year member, invite them to your local awards ceremony for a moment of recognition.

Thank you notes

John Houtari of East Tennessee SPJ has a worthwhile practice. Whenever John gets a notice that renewing members have paid their dues, he e-mails them a thank you note. The fact that he takes a bit of time to do that goes a long way toward holding his chapter together.

The Post Graduate Deal

Membership Coordinator Linda Hall pointed out that SPJ is currently offering a special deal on the new expanded post-graduate members. For a limited time, recent college graduates can pay $72 for two years of dues and get their third year free.

Local chapters might do well by offering this deal to the parents of graduating journalism students as a thoughtful graduation present.

Job hunt advice

Another way to hang onto your student SPJ members after they graduate is to make a concerted effort to help them with job hunting advice and tips on potential jobs. This service can go a long way toward building loyalty.

Membership Directors

Many chapters are currently operating without someone designated specifically as a membership chair. This means the chapter’s overworked president frequently is the only person available to make calls to people whose memberships are about to expire. Or worse yet, the calls are never made.

Make it a priority in your chapter this year for someone to take on this basic responsibility. Hanging onto a member is just as valuable as finding a new one.

Carrots

Give your membership directors a little bit of leverage with folks who have been slow to renew. If you have an upcoming event of interest, dangle a free ticket as an incentive to renew.

Programs for Pros

Sometimes in our zeal for teaching young journalists, we forget to do programs aimed at the interestes of mid-career journalists.

Sarah Bauer of Minnesota SPJ suggested an excellent program idea. Host a session for reporters and editors who are trying to balance the demands of motherhood and journalism.

If you have your own strategies for creating the glue that holds a chapter together, share them with us and we’ll post them in a future Garden Center report.

Garden Center update

You may recall in the second posting to this blog  on Nov. 12 when I described the frustrations of trying to recruit a talented but reluctant colleague to SPJ. (See “A Tough Nut”)

We’ll the Gardener is pleased to report that “Gywn” handed him a check last week and will be the Colorado chapter’s newest member next week.

What finally helped win Gynn over were some steady (but not obnoxious) reminders about the values of SPJ plus a free ticket to a sold-out SPJ breakfast with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

SPJ by the numbers

Membership this week: 8,926

Membership one month ago: 9,201

Membership one year ago: 8,753

A few weeks ago, the gardener recommended assigning the youngest member of your chapter write a profile of one of the oldest members.

In Colorado, that translated to a meeting between Aaron Hedge, a journalism student at Colorado State University and Ron McGaffin, a Fort Collins man who came from a family of journalists in Nebraska.

Here is the story that Aaron wrote for an upcoming edition of the Colorado SPJ newsletter. The value of this piece is more than just a story. It’s a way for one generation of journalists to connect and learn from an older generation.

By Aaron Hedge

Looking at Ron McGaffin, a sweet 91-year-old patron of Columbine Health System who uses a walker to get between the bathroom and the kitchen, one wouldn’t guess he had an illustrious career as a military photographer..

Photographing everything from prestigious war figures, like Winston Churchill and his good friend Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Abdulaziz, to puppies sleeping in shoes, McGaffin continued his family’s journalistic legacy during World War II taking photos for the army.

He signed up for a membership with Sigma Delta Chi in 1936 and has been a member of what is now the Society of Professional Journalists ever since.

Since then he has photographed Presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt along with a slew of other prestigious figures.

One of his favorite assignments was an Edward R. Murrow interview with George S. Patton.

McGaffin has taken photographs for the Army, Stars and Stripes newspaper, Northrop and McDonnell/Douglas. He also served as manager of Government Relations for Northrop in Saudi Arabia from 1972 to 1995, when he moved to Fort Collins at the age of 89.

But his real passion lies not with military photography, but with dogs.

When an SPJ reporter asked him what his favorite photo he had ever taken was, he pointed to his apartment wall without hesitation at a photo of a puppy sleeping between his combat boots that he took in Europe during World War II.

“I bought him … for a pack of Lucky Strikes,” he said of the animal. “Thank God for the Humane Society. They let me bring back to the states.”

McGaffin now lives in Fort Collins, has a wife (who “made the mistake of coming into the darkroom one time,” when they first met at Northrop) and three children.

Garden Center Tip of the Week

Start your next chapter board meeting with a report on the current number of members as well as the number from the previous month. Also read out loud the names of new members.

This is a good quick way for board members to keep track of how their chapter is growing or shrinking.

SPJ by the numbers

Membership this week               8,821

Membership one month ago      9,150

Membership one year ago         8,755