I'm glad to hear that membership is increasing with the new website;
this shows the value of making proactive attempts to increase interest.
If there is any time that a fruit growing club should be increasing in
size it is now, with the explosion of interest in growing one's own
food, keeping chickens and bees, and so forth. My suspicion is that one
of the difficulties that NAFEX faces is not that it is not sufficiently
international but that it is not sufficiently local. Local fruit growing
clubs like Backyard Fruit Growers in PA have large memberships and
meetings are very well attended by people living in the area. NAFEX
basically has only one meeting a year and a newsletter, and it is often
expensive to attend that meeting if it is at the other side of the
country from where one lives.
One positive step that could immediately be taken is to make the online
forum open to all viewers and not password protected. Perhaps only NAFEX
members could contribute, but it should be something anyone can see.
This is common with forums on the web. We are stabbing ourselves in the
foot by not allowing anyone with an interest in fruit to see it.
(Incidentally, I like online forums. One problem with the email system
is that we get a lot of repetition in the posts from the preceding
posts; it is also easy to search online forums for material.)
I'll be interested to hear the thoughts of others on these issues.