Philatelic Societies And The Computer Age

Can a philatelic society, club, association and such really expect to attract the younger generation of stamp collector without offering an means of payment of dues in an electronic means, notably by PayPal.

One of the tipping points for my actually joining the APS and the USPCS (US Philatelic Classics Society) was because I could do so electronically. I think I got a box of checks when I opened my checking account but they are probably still in the box I packed them in when I last moved. There are other societies I would like to join, but I am not interested in the expense and/or inconvenience of getting checks and mailing them.

Thoughts?

Smauggie, I would generally agree with you. However, it's getting young persons started in the first place! That's Hard!

Smauggie: some specialist philatelic societies are too small to be able to mess with electronic payments. Those do cost money to the vendor, by the way. Credit card fees can run as high as several % points of the payment. I belong to a couple; one around 200 - 250 members; and other with about 350 members.

Pay Pal also is not the answer. I had let my Pay Pal account lapse a couple years ago; meaning I had not used it for several years. In 2012, I tried to re-activate it and could not do so. They wanted my social security number and other personal information sent to a; unknown to me; fax number. I got the same story from several representatives by e-mail and phone. Obviously I'm not sending personal data in that way. I ended up in Pay Pal's Bill Me Later program where I can do pay-as-I-go. Of course, I seldom use it because there are other ways; pay direct by credit card and avoid the Pay Pal middleman.

You asked for thoughts. Here are mine about your lack of desire to use checks and mailing them. I pay my monthly bills by a mix of on line payments and and mailed checks. I use commemoratives on all my outgoing mail. I also have some older USPS 42 and 44 cent flag stamps so I can continue to use up the old 3 and 4 cent commems that I inherited when by dad passed away in the early 1990s. He had so many that I'm just a little over half way through them in 20+ years. I always hope that someone in a mail department of a utility will see the old commems and become intrigued, so to speak.

Nothing personal please. But none of us can really complain about the decline of our hobby and have much credibility when we fail to use our hobby's products.

I think the answer is, no, it can't.

My kids, my grandson and their friends are plugged in to the Internet. The thought of mailing a check is totally foreign to them. They simply aren't going to be bothered.

The same goes for applications (some of which come across as very elitist). They aren't going to download a file, fill it out and mail it.

It's also true for catalogs. How many times have we seen the question here, "Where on the internet can I find ... ?"

I know it is strange to some of us who were brought up writing and mailing letters and paying bills by check. Going to the library to get a book or to look something up was just a part of our routine. Not so any more. Like it or not, the new generations don't think like that.

If an organization can't manage an online presence and electronic payments, it may need to rethink its dues structure and/or recognize that its membership is going to remain small and will include few, if any, younger members.

Dan

Climber_Steve,

Your thoughts are appreciated. I was not complaining about the decline of the hobby. In fact I was trying to draw attention to ways in which it could grow. You didn't really make an argument of why or how a society could be too small to accept Paypal payments, and if you have one I would be interested in hearing it.

Imo, the electronic payment is the smallest problem philatelic societies have for attracting young people membership. I belong to 3 of them and, at 55, I'm amongst the younger members. Young people don't even know what stamps are, and we are not going to change that ...I'm trying not to be pesimist, but you must face facts...

Hi smauggie

Here in Atlanta, Georgia I use Sun Trust Bank to pay bills as they have a bill pay system. If the entity I am paying cannot handle electronic deposits then the bank issues a paper check and mails it to them. This is only for the continental United States and is a free service.

Check with your bank and see if they have a similar service.

Jerry B

jbcev80: I have a friend here in metro Denver who gets the same type of service from Wells Fargo bank.

As an aside, several posters focus on getting young people. I'd say retiring baby boomers and anyone over 40 in general ought to be a fertile recruiting ground.

Re smauggie's question, one of my specialist societies has checked into Pay Pal. A potential problem is that about half the membership resides in Britain and Portugal. I haven't paid real close attention as I pay that particular bill by check.