Need Help With Stamp Club.

I live in a stamp collecting dead zone and am tired of it! This New Year I would like to set up a new club and need help with how about to go and accomplish this. I have access to various meeting places that will be chosen for a meeting place.
We have a club in Memphis about 30 minutes away but that's it with 1 show a year and meetings once a month. The next closest club or show is about a 200 mile radius. I need more access to a stamp fix and see this as the only way to go and need help how to form the club. Will take all opinions and suggestions very welcome.

I may be highly criticized for this point of view, but MAKE IT EASY to buy and sell at your club. This is what folks want to do -- get rid of what they don't collect, and buy what they DO. Education is fine, and club business is essential, but don't restrict sales to one vest-pocket dealer night a year. Our club has two big auctions a year, and a mini auction every meeting, the proceeds of which often end up as donations to the treasury.

Let people bring card tables and sell, sell, sell, the half-hour before the meeting's called to order. NO selling during the meeting. Forget about APS slide shows; some of them I've seen a dozen times now. Give existing members a 50c credit toward next year's dues every time they bring a junior collector along, up to $5 per year. Don't shut down in the summer. Pick a meeting place with nice restrooms, plenty of light, and safe parking. Leave meeting notices as bookmarks in the stamp catalogs at the library.

I am undecided about refreshments. They're a nuisance, and a lot of extra work for "somebody," usually the tag-along wives who couldn't care less about stamps. Station a volunteer with a cellphone to oversee the parking area both before and especially after the meeting. Encourage members to bring unwanted Linn's and stamp magazines for others to take home and enjoy, instead of throwing them away. Find a tech-savvy member to highlight websites and alert members to online scams. Keep the membership list (with its addresses and phone numbers and email addresses) a BIG SECRET -- never sold, rented, or given to any other member for any reason.

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One other controversial thought. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the last 25 years of our club, has proven to be more trouble than owning stamp frames for exhibits in the annual show. They get broken, they get lost, the storage facility closes, they get dirty, someone has to haul them back and forth and set them up and take them down, it never ends.

There has to be a better way. My guess would be that we would have been much better off, in terms of avoiding frustration, deadlines, and unexpected expenses, to tell some other local or regional club(s)--YOU rent us your frames, YOU deliver them and set them up, and YOU pick them up after the show -- for this, we will pay you MONEY. If there's several nearby clubs, let them submit sealed bids.

This is worth discussing repeatedly with the membership and with the Board of Directors before making a decision or a massive outlay for frames, new or used.

I belong to 4 clubs. The largest has an auction each month where people can bring 5 lots. Three times a year we allow 10. We also have a member share a story or presentation. We have nearly 100 members, but only 35 to 55 come to the monthly meeting. The annual dues are $5.00 and 10% of the auction proceeds go to the club. They sponser one show a year and co-sponser the big show in Minnesota along with other clubs and the dealer association. Email me for more details

doug2222 has a lot of good points about stamp clubs - the APS slide shows can be mindnumbing and it's dated technology. I would also add that the APS sales books is also nothing but a chore for whoever is in charge of them. Let club members trade, sell and buy instead.

ALSO - make sure the meeting times allow for the greatest number of people to attend. I'm a member of one local club, but I can only attend when I do not have work since it meets at 3:00pm on Wednesdays. Anyone with a regular job is excluded and folks wonder why younger people are not joining. Also avoid time conflicts with other club/stamp shows - The Williamstown, Massachusetts (Berkshire) club meets on Sundays usually when there's a monthly stamp show in Albany, New York. I live in between the two and more prone to go to the latter. Also if a stamp club can set up a table at small local stamp shows that would be great - for attracting new members and allowing club members to sell their own material (usually with a small percentage kept for the club's coffers).

Really? Is there somewhere I could I find out more about these two?

new12collector I am not familiar with the Williamstown club..but I do attend the Capital District monthly stamp and collectibles show..its now held in Troy instead of Albany ! The contact is George McGowan...a nice fellow phone 518-479-4396 or e mail geolotus2003@nycap.rr.com !

All the APS-affiliated stamp clubs are listed, by State (with contacts), on the APS website. This is not all the clubs in the U.S., however. Here's the link.

http://stamps.org/Local-Clubs

Some great ideas and suggestions so far. Doug some points you brought up a just great. The part about selling before a meeting is something I wish my current club wold look into. Yes we do meeting business then a small auction. I still plan on having membership in my current club bt one more would not hrt and there has got to be some collectors in my area that would be looking for the same.

It will be talked over at the first meeting for future times bt what do all of you think better times for meets? I lean towards afternoon Saturdays or a weeknight at 6 or 7.

Does anyone know the difference to acquire APS membership for a club? Of course this would be after a established club but will be needed.

When I lived in Maryland, the Bowie Stamp Club met on Mondays at 7pm each week and the meetings were well attended.

Also to help find members, ask your various local post offices if they will allow an information card on a visible bulletin board or other such location with information about the stamp club (time and place of meetings along with a contact phone #/email). The post office is a collector's usual favorite place so it makes sense to advertise there.

Also to clarify, it's the Mohawk stamp club that meets in Williamstown, MA...the Berkshire Club is in Pittsfield, MA - but I was right about one of their meeting times conflicts with the Albany Stamp Show.

Saturday afternoon is highly disruptive to most people. Select a week night (Monday thru Thursday) that doesn't conflict with church, 7 p.m. sounds good, gets you home before dark six months of the year. Maybe two meetings a month for nine months of the year, one meeting a month for June, July, and August. Some clubs replace some meetings with picnics or Christmas dinners; I never go to food events. But that's just me.

"Outreach" is critical. The APS will sell you address labels by Zip Code for one-time use, for instance to notify APS members of a new club in the area. They always throw in a couple ringers to see if you are photocopying the labels and using them repeatedly.

Another idea I heard about, but don't know how it came out: "Shanghai night," when you make your very best effort to bring a collector-friend along with you. I don't know if it is worth mailing meeting reminders any more. Surely 80% of your members have email, which is free. You can spend a lot of money even mailing out postcards, and you need that money to rent your NICE meeting-place, your biggest expense. Some libraries will give you a nice meeting room, more or less free, but they tend to be too small, and they close up too early. In my town, we'd have to be out and gone by 8 p.m., too early unless you start at 6 p.m., which interferes with dinner and getting home from work.

Start a facebook page for your club to be.
Put a add in Craigslist saying you are planing on opening a stamp club and put the link to the facebook page.
Most people have a facebook page and will be able to join the fb page.
Once you get a few hits and people join the page talk about what times and days would work the best.

If the title of the add is something like " Stamp club New York" anyone that does a google search for stamp club new york will get a link on google to your add, and with craigslist you will probably be on the first page if not the first add.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! No ads on CraigsList. All that does is attract psychos, Chinese hackers, and spammers. You will not attract any new members through CraigsList. Stamp sellers (except ME) tend to be grossly misinformed about values, write absurd descriptions, and otherwise display gross ignorance about philately.

I have 7 years experience on CraigsList, and generally have 40+ ads running (currently 9 of them for stamps) and can put up with this nonsense, because the ads are free, and you can toplist them every 48 hours. I have made some good sales, but it's a minefield for the novice, or, for people who expect respectable, principled people to reply...

Somebody's recent (and typical) CraigsList ad: "...I have a stamp collection for sale. Not sure of the true value but would make a nice addition for someone who has a collection already I am sure. Contact me to meet to view them and we can negotiate price then. No low ball offers please this was inherited and I will not let go for cheap offers..." [no photos, no price, no description]

Sound enticing? Don't publicize the new club in CraigsList. Trust me on this.

The very first visit to a stamp club was a horrible experience.
When I was 16 and a few friends and I was at one of the city parks in Chicago ,we stopped by the field house in the park. On the bulletin board was a notice of a stamp club meeting there on Monday nights at 7:00 pm .
The next Monday ,I gathered my stamp album with all its treasures in it .I borrowed my brothers bike to make the trip .I took a bath and put on my Sunday clothes and off I went with my eagerness to show my treasure to fellow collectors .When I got there, there was a bunch of old men sitting around a table in the basement room and a few were smoking cigars and stinking up the room and part of the basement .Two members talked to me and the rest,the other five didn't say anything,I sat down at the table with my whole stamp collection in front of me . One collector who sounded like the leader asked to see my collection.He flipped thru it quickly and then announces in a loud voice to everybody --------"It has nothing worthwhile in it and just packet material stuff" --------I was SHOCKED.
The rest of the meeting was a few off color jokes and other none philatelic stuff ,which I didn't pay attention to ,when the meeting was over I got on the bike, embrassed and rode home .I cried on the ride home .

I am not talking about selling on Craigslist, but using it as a announce board for the new club.
With any add on craigslist your going to get hit with spam.
But if you use it as a advert to a facebook page this will avoid the spam, if your really paranoid open up a disposable gmail account for the add this way you wont have on going spam mail into your regular account.
Most organizations use a facebook page, even Obama open up a account.
All I saying is you need to get the word out that there is a new club and most people look on craigslist from time to time, its free to advertise on and gets a wide audience.
You could also put a add in the newspaper

I didn't say not to use Facebook, I said don't run an ad in CraigsList. Big difference.

But if you use craigslist to direct traffic to the facebook page.
That's what I meant to say Doug. Your right about craigslist some serious wackos troll on that site