Our subscription year ends on 31st March 2023.
By that date Mary and I will have organised and run no less than 70 shoots since 1st January 2022. This equates to around two whole months of our time over that period.
Looking back over this period It is disheartening to find that quite a few members have shot with us less than ten times over more than two years.
We do not count those members who have had difficulties – and who have kept in touch with us, or are life or concessionary members, and we’ve taken account of the cancellations at Sealand.
We only ask that members shoot with at least four times a year (one more than the absolute minimum that the Home Office want to see) yet very sadly no less than Thirteen members did not even achieve this in 2022. (Again not including those mentioned above.)
It may well be that we are doing something (or not doing something) that does not appeal to those members, so we held a couple of on-line surveys, and we always like to ask after a shoot if there was anything we could do better. While there are some areas for improvement, there has been no sign of general dissatisfaction, and I’m sure most members would tell us if there was.
We have a waiting list to join, and therefore some members will not be invited to renew their membership in 2023/24: this is painful to us as we regard members as friends – that’s a part of the ethos of Phoenix.
We do not want to be a club where people take advantage of us just in order to keep a Firearm Certificate, or to zero their rifles on the odd occasion. We are absolutely sure that’s not what the vast majority of members want, and its certainly not the sort of club we would want to be members of.
What should we do? Should we run far fewer shoots? Should we reduce the club to a much smaller number of members? Should we raise the annual subscription massively and remove range fees? NONE of those options appeal, and if every member attended more we wouldn’t need to even consider them. That doesn’t apply to those members mentioned above.
So, getting back to the point of this post – Please, if you want to remain a member of Phoenix, come and shoot with us.
We are truly thankful that the above does NOT apply to the majority who come and shoot regularly with us.