Members may be aware that via ClubNews, the Forum and in last month’s Gazette, we asked a question about estimating the demand from members for a possible membership option where their Gazette was delivered to them digitally rather than printed and posted. This was to explore whether this was a worthwhile option for future Gazette delivery following requests from some members for a “Digital” Gazette.
There is no question of the Club stopping the Gazette, we simply wanted to evaluate the demand for an option to deliver it differently for those members who wanted it.
A simple “Page turning” PDF of the Gazette was provided as an example but at this stage we have not decided on exactly how this would look or work other than it could be viewed on screen and could be downloaded for “off-line” reading and local storage by members.
The survey has now closed and here are the results.
Results of the survey
Number of responses via the link provided in the Gazette 25
Number of responses via the link provided in ClubNews 414
Total responses 439
These responses are 5.8% of the total membership
Those who expressed an interest in having an Online only Gazette = 41%
Those who would want to continue with a posted paper Gazette= 59%
Conclusion
We were quite surprised that such a large proportion, approaching half the respondents would be interested in taking up an option for a “Digital” means of delivery of their Gazette. We also expected rather more than 25 respondents via the article in the September Gazette.
We cannot say that a turn-out of 5.8% is representative but it is the best information we have and clearly there is some demand for this option. On this basis, the board will now look at how this could work in terms of impact on costs, advertising income and systems.
For the avoidance of any doubt, there are no plans to stop the Gazette in any form, it remains an important part of our Club offering to members.
