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Visionary Ideas How Many Regions Do We Need Anyway???
Visionary Ideas How Many Regions Do We Need Anyway???
How Many Regions Do We Need Anyway??? |
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Do we really need TWELVE regions -- absolutely NOT. The information was right there in front us all this time but we were so focused on other issues (and yes there's at least a handful of issues) it didn't ring clear until WBCCI #32083 (thanks Mike) posted the data on another site. As discussed on the Save Wally Forums, a region is nothing more than a management structure over a piece of geography. Is it safe to say that it takes MORE energy to manage a region with 22 units and just over a thousand members than it does to manage a region with just 5 units and less than 200 members? What's the differential in cost to the club for supporting region officer expenses in these smaller regions? Does the club need to sustain the standard region overhead just to manage 5 units and 200 members? Unlikely. The excuse to keep 12 regions would be two items mostly. 1) That a region needs to be small enough so that region officers can travel to all of the functions within the region. 2) A region's area can't be so large that a majority of its officers couldn't get together easily and members would find it unreasonable to travel to a Region Rally or event. They're both bad arguments by the way so let's flip 'em and address them... Where a region NEEDS to be large to cover the small population within people are pretty much relegated to the fact that they are in somewhat remote areas (Denver for example). Sure Denver has everything you could possible want unless you're looking for large areas of similar population densities once you LEAVE Denver. Denver's beautiful (well not the city itself) but how far should someone from Denver have to travel in order to attend a region rally? Probably an unreasonable distance considering the population density of an area worthy of classifying as a region. But hey -- I think people in Denver expect this. They know they're out there (as in away from other densely populated areas). They probably don't expect to find 5 times their areas membership within a four hour drive. Region officers don't need to be face to face often and if a region is big enough to support the management structure then officers SHOULD come from ALL areas of that region. It's a disservice to have all of a regions officers within 20 minutes of each other -- that's an old boys club -- not region management. Officers are committed to serve, they should understand that some long travel will be required for them to get them together. They'll also make sure that region rallies will be central to most whether it's still too far for a casual member to travel to or not. Having to rely on FREE information (thanks again Mike!) I went digging for a population density map. Then I found a list of the top 50 cities in the US. How accurate is the data? Well, the pop map is from 2000. Has the majority of the US population moved drastically since 2000? Probably not. I did find Top 50 cities data that had projected 2005 numbers. Top 50 Cities: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html US 2000 Pop Density Map http://www.theodora.com/maps/new9/usa_population_density.jpg 1st my apologies to the fine folks in Canada. I don't have the data for them at this stage. I'll need to find a Canadian map and join it with the one below and then hunt down pop data for cities down to similar sizes represented on this one. This is a first stab at this after all. The map attached shows population density by county. I've added the top 50 city data. The circles AREA represents total population of that CITY. For instance -- the New York City circle represents 8.1 million people in the CITY. The Minneapolis, MN circle represents .372 million people in that CITY by (the circles) AREA. So how does the WBCCI go from 12 Regions with a membership of as little as 198 members in a single region and a max of 1,093 members. It's pretty simple actually. You take membership numbers by state (I've requested them) and then you take a blank map, plug in the numbers, and then redraw the regions according to whatever it takes to come up with 6 or 7 equal regions. Regions 1, 7, & 8 are obviously full of great people. There's quite a bit of excitement going on in Region 1, but the membership as a whole doesn't deserve to carry the burden and the financial overhead of bestowing region benefits over these relatively small areas of membership clusters. Combine Regions 1 & 2 at a minimum. Look at all the other regions and combine them where and when you can to support 6 or 7 near equal size regions. Of course all of this begs the questions: 1) What are the actual annual costs required to run each of the 12 current WBCCI regions? 2) How many regions where there when the WBCCI had ~25,000 members? 3) What is the current WBCCI membership breakdown by state? I think the answers to all of these questions would help move the topic along nicely. So what should you really glean from the map? It shows you were people are. It shows you were people aren't. If we should have equal regions it shows you that once you're in the mid-west you're likely to have one big-ass region somewhere. Maybe a Region Rally just doesn't work there. Maybe in those territories State Rallies are the key. But I'm sure those isolated folks out there already have killer sell-out events every year. Maybe that's the way it needs to be. |