Gardener’s note: The St. Louis Pro Chapter was one of three chapters honored at the SPJ National Convention for posting the greatest gains in membership. St. Louis won on the strength of a jump from 31 in June 2007 to 80 by May 2008.

Shera Dalin, a member of the SPJ membership committee, provided this story on how St. Louis achieved its rapid increase:

Word of the St. Louis Pro chapter’s whopping 158 percent membership growth over the past year took a few of us by surprise. Certainly we had noticed new faces and had seen some stellar turnout to our events, but we had no idea that we were tops in the nation in chapter growth and No. 2 in net gain of new members.

So how’d we do it? We had to think about that for a bit, but here’s what we attribute it to. The following comments are from Chapter President Rachel Melcer.

·         The chapter had been dormant, so we had nowhere to go but up. Once we reactivated it, people seemed to welcome SPJ—pent-up demand, if you will.

·         We’ve been very aggressive about programming, offering a monthly luncheon panel discussion and a purely social happy hour every month. The quality of our speakers has attracted good turnout, especially the launch of a competing Web-based St. Louis news site—STLBeacon.com. (We packed the lunch discussion when we had the founders come to speak.) We tried to balance our panels between practical journalism and issue-based topics.

·         St. Louis also has a lot of retired journalists, and they were looking for programs like these as a way of staying involved. We’ll be marketing to more of them this year as, sadly, their numbers are growing.

·         We’ve also held a couple of much more high-profile events that were very successful: a spring regional conference in 2007, and a journalism-themed trivia night last fall. Trivia nights are a St. Louis specialty – nearly every church, private school and charity seems to have one. But ours was the first that was tailored to journalists. Selling beer didn’t hurt either.

·         Our board has very consciously worked to diversify itself. As members have stepped down, or new positions have been created, we recruit new board members from media that haven’t been represented. Our board includes journalists from radio, the Web, academia, the freelance world and print publications ranging from the big daily to a small, free-distribution weekly. We are each able to reach out to a different pool of potential members and program participants.

·         We’ve had great membership chairs – first former Post-Dispatch science writer Tina Saey, and freelance journalist Shera Dalin. These days, we benefit from Shera’s broad network of journalists from all over our region. Recently, she and two other board members visited a newsroom where we had been unknown, pitching SPJ to their reporters and editors. As a result, several people have begun attending our programs and we hope to convert them to members.

·         We reach out individually to prospective members and invite them to join in a low-key way. No hard sale tactics required.

·         And we hope to do even more in the future. We’re planning another spring regional conference for 2009, and we’d like to include a journalism contest as part of that program. Another trivia night already is in the works. So, we plan to build on our success going forward to make the St. Louis Pro Chapter even bigger and more vibrant.

And the winners are…

Later this week at the SPJ national convention in Atlanta, three outstanding pro and student chapters will be honored with the first-ever Green Thumb awards for being the fastest growing chapters in the country.

The SPJ membership committee decided last fall to present these awards to the chapters that posted the largest membership gains either by number or percentage based upon the May 1, 2008 census.

And the winners are: Maryland Pro, St. Louis Pro and the University of Drake student chapter in Des Moines, Iowa.

Maryland posted the greatest numeric gain by posting a net increase of 59 new members, quite a jump for a chapter that started the year with 55 members.

St. Louis grew from 31 members last year to 80, for a percentage gain of 158 percent.

If corn grew as fast as the Drake SPJ chapter, we would have beat world hunger. The chapter went from just two faithful members to 55 in one year.

How did they do it? If we could bottle their methods, I’d send every chapter a case.

For the story of how Drake revived its chapter, see Kate Fazzini’s story in the July 27 post on the Garden Center blog.

Watch this space also for stories from members of the St. Louis and Maryland chapters within the next few weeks.

The outstanding growth enjoyed by these three chapters is part of larger trend that saw SPJ’s national membership rolls grow by about 6.5 percent over the last year.

Our current membership stands at 9,650, an increase of 589 members. That’s the highest level we’ve reached in at least two years.

Those gains come after several years of flat or no growth. What makes this trend all the more remarkable is that we posted these gains at a time when economic turmoil in the newspaper business has led to the loss of more than 6,000 jobs.

How did we do it? Analysis shows the two fastest growing sectors of SPJ has been among the professional and post-graduate members.

At last year’s convention in Washington D.C., members approved a deal that extended the post-graduate rate of $36 per year for three years after a college journalist graduated.

We also sweetened that deal by offered a three-year membership for the price of two years.

The results were clear: we had a net gain of 208 new post-graduates, an increase of 24 percent.

Growth among the professional chapters was steady and pervasive nationwide. Of the 64 chapters for which data was available, 55 chapters posted membership gains, for a net increase of 367 pro members.

Our challenge for the year ahead will be retaining these members and continue to grow. But with innovative and energetic chapters like Drake, St. Louis and Maryland, I’m confident we’ll find a way.

Postscript…

This week marks my last post for the Garden Center. After a year as membership chair, I’m stepping down to run for Region 9 director.

The very able John Huotari, a committee member from Tennessee, will take over as chair this month. Please give John the help that I enjoyed this past year.

It’s been a fun year. I wish to thank the membership committee for all their ideas and suggestions. And a special thanks to vice chair Ellen Mrja for keeping both the faith and the minutes.

I’d also like to thank our “gardeners” Kate Fazzini, Melvin “Buddy” Baker and Rekha Raman, who helped report and write stories for the Garden Center. Special thanks to Kate for also keeping members of the SPJ membership network informed.

And last but not least, thanks to SPJ staffers Linda Hall and Joe Skeel, who were invaluable when it came to helping put our ideas into practice.

SPJ by the numbers

Membership this week            9,650

Membership last month          9,570

Membership one year ago       9,061