RVC Column – December, 2024 – Michael Eager, RVC 8

San Francisco Regional Mensa held the Brilliance by the North Bay Regional Gathering in San Rafael, just north of SF, the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was a great success, with over 200 people attending, drawing members from the San Francisco Bay Area, the West Coast (Seattle to San Diego), and even from Chicago. The Gifted Youth track, a first time for the SF RG, attracted 28 GY members. Lana Lee and Maria Gomez organized a full day of activities, with the help of Molly Bundschuh (from the AML office), Nick Kloski and Bernadette Hill-Comeau. The project to encourage parents of GY members to become Mensa members was well subscribed, with seven parents taking the Mensa Admissions Test. Dr. Frank C. Worrell was awarded the Mensa Foundation 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Mensa Foundation President (and SFRM member) Nguyen Pham, followed by Dr. Worrell’s keynote presentation. Congratulations to Jennifer Storm-Alves who chaired the RG (as well as serving as SFRM LocSec) and to the entire RG Committee.

Eastern Washington/Northern Idaho/Montana (otherwise called EWNIM) is conducting an election this month. This is, as I understand it, the first election in several years which is being conducted according to the EWNIM bylaws. The new ExComm will take office January 1. I wish all of the candidates the best of luck and thank them for volunteering. EWNIM is one of our larger groups (perhaps second only to Alaska Mensa) in area. Their 190 members are scattered across three states. There are plans to start meetings in cities where there are concentrations of members.

The Marketing Officer and the staff Director of Marketing and Communication gave a presentation to the AMC (American Mensa Committee, our board of directors) about the marketing survey conducted by an outside service in January and about the current marketing strategy. To say that I was disappointed in both would be an understatement. The survey was poorly designed and provided little that we did not already know. The marketing strategy described American Mensa’s membership as flat, which is true only if you compare the number of members in 2000 (47,000) with the number today (48,000), and ignore the increase in membership from 2000 to a stable plateau (56,000-58000) from 2009 to 2017, and the decrease in membership by 15% since 2017. The marketing strategy looks to local groups to be the front line in Mensa marketing, despite recognizing that most local groups do not have the resources to fill this need. There appears to be no plan for the national office to do any nationwide marketing.

The new Technology Committee, which I chair, posted a call for appointments to committee positions. We received a surprising 34 applicants. As you might guess, evaluating this large number of applications is taking a bit of time. We also received 62 responses to the survey we sent to local groups about how they use technology and what their needs are. We have taken a quick initial look at the data and will use it to guide our plans.

Which brings me to the topic of volunteers. SFRM had a solid group of dedicated volunteers working on the Regional Gathering, yet it was apparent that more were needed. Every local group depends on a small number of people to organize activities, maintain websites, produce newsletters, and more. At the same time, I receive many suggestions on what we could do to make Mensa grow and to make our local groups more vibrant. The disconnect is that there are many members with great ideas but few who step forward to make those ideas a reality. If you would like to see these ideas implemented, please reach out to me or to your Local Secretary.

Drop me a note at rvc8@us.mensa.org with questions or comments. Past RVC columns and more can be found at https://mensa.eagerm.tech.