I joined a local club a few years ago. They had friday evening meetings that I was able to attend. (work out of state during the week). They had 100+ members with regular meeting attendance of 50-80 people. Multiple linked repeater locations, weekly sunday night net, massive Field Day participation, monthly field excursions, an annual swap meet, good prestige among the community and other local clubs...............
Then they start making changes. First was the repeater committee deciding to convert their most popular and used repeater to Yeasu system fusion and unlinking it from their network. This was a COMMITTEE decision, not a membership decision. Now, over half of the membership is kicked off the weekly sunday night net. (I'm sure as heck NOT buying a special radio just to check in and say "no traffic" on a sunday night.) Unlinking the repeater and disposing of Echolink now has alienated a good group of snowbirds that are (were) members also. Then, the executive committee decided they want to build a nice big HF remote station for the club. But it's expensive and they have a 5 year plan and need to raise the annual membership dues from $25/year to $125/year. This is an EXECUTIVE committee decision, not a membership decision. Well, crap hits the fan, special meetings are called, the whole situation just blows up, and the net result is that over half the clubs members just up and leave. Some of the leaders of the Field Day ops and monthly excursions decide to splinter off and form their own club.
Then..........COVID hits. They go to ZOOM meetings only. I for one am NOT buying a camera and microphone just to look at a bunch of people on my computer screen. Memberships continues to decline. I'm not sure where they are now.....but I've looked at their financial reports, and they ain't doing good boys and girls.
They have finally decided to return their primary repeater to analog because no one was using the Yeasu system fusion machine. They abandoned the $125 increase in annual dues, and as of a few months ago, resumed in person monthly club meetings. I decided to attend one just to see if I might be interested in returning. SIGH.......it was a joke. Sure, they had a nice ZOOM presentation about contesting, but the atmosphere was somber and just a shell of what it used to be. A TOTAL of 15 people present and a couple people dialed in for the ZOOM presentation.
What put the nail in the coffin for me was when the ZOOM presenter asked if the club has participated in Field Day this year. There was an "excuse" given that due to Covid, they ran out of time to find a location. The real reason being that all the people that set up and participated in Field Day left the club and formed their own club and they couldn't scrape the people/equipment/location together to do it.
So, the moral of the story boys and girls, if you don't want to run your club into the ground.......ASK your membership about any changes you are thinking about making first. Just doing things by executive committee and pissing off your membership is NOT the way to keep a club successful.