Associations, particularly those with large memberships, have a tough time growing the numbers. There are several reasons for this; some obvious and some not so obvious. But, members who find it worthwhile to belong to an association usually keep coming back year after year.
NAPPS members must be finding something worthwhile, because we just had an incredible 93.2% renewal rate. We sent out 1425 renewal notices and only 98 members did not renew. We usually lose about 8% of our membership every year, but this year it was only 6.8%.
Regrettably, death took five of our members-David Kern, a founding member from Los Angeles, CA; Michael Ferraro, Somerset, MA; Benjamin Graves, Gulf Port, MS; Cathy Showman, Wichita Falls; and B.J. Bennett, Olympia, WA.
Four were expelled by the Board of Directors; seven retired, including founding member Louis Orecchio, of Los Angeles; approximately 25 could not be contacted; and the remainder did not renew because they sold their business, got out the industry, had health problems or didn't renew for a variety of reasons.
Surprisingly, two members chose not to renew because they couldn't handle the work. One said he was "overwhelmed" with the incoming workload and the other said he was "swamped" with business. I guess this confirms the old adage that you can have too much of a good thing.
My biggest concern has been the extent to which NAPPS has so thoroughly mined the process serving industry for members and how this will impact our future growth. I believe it can be said with some justification that anybody who is anybody in this industry is either a current member, a former member, or a wannabe member. That doesn't leave a lot of acreage to plow for a new crop.
Currently, NAPPS has no affirmative program to help those novices just entering the process-serving field. And, with some exceptions, this is the only really fertile ground from which to grow new members.
There are currently approximately 2300 individuals or companies nationwide who advertise themselves in the telephone yellow pages under the category of "process servers." These numbers are incredibly deceptive, as we all know, since the thousands of individual process servers who work for process serving companies are not listed in the yellow pages. Also absent are most of the small 'mom and pop' operations and virtually all of that multitude of individuals who serve only part-time.
Many of these individuals are finding NAPPS due to our website, which for months has been our primary source for attracting new members. Over the last three years we've had more than 180,000 hits on our website, but about half of those came within the past 12 months. We're working diligently to make it a better, more usable site and it seems to be paying off.
Membership Directory
The Fall edition of the membership directory was shipped to the printer (camera ready) on October 2. We are told that it will be ready for shipment to the members by the end of the month. So keep an eye out for yours the first week in November.
