Conservation oriented banquets....

J

JimG

Well-known member
What are the rest of you guys seeing at your banquets in terms of attendance? Be it DU, Delta, or your local organization? CT Waterfowlers Association had their annual Spring Banquet yesterday. It used to be that we would get about 180 attendees every year. I think we peaked one year at nearly 240. Last year we had around 130 attendees if I recall correctly, and yesterday we only had 105. Wallets were generally kept shut. We did a deck of cards raffle for pick of the auction and only sold half of the deck. Other than one item that went over $400, the live auction was pretty meager. A Keith Mueller remarqued print went for only $85!

Is it the economy, apathy, or are we just dying off?

Our banquet is reasonably priced at $45/head for your meal and beer/wine. Slightly over our cost.

Jim
 
Jim I love the CWA dinner and if it weren't for me working weekends as my main work week I would be there every year. I have noticed that folks are staying way clear of prints and what I call "static" items at my DU event in the Lake Champlain Islands. These items include sculptures, prints, and it hurts me to say, hand-carved decoys. I have been talking to other guys that have attended similar dinners by other organizations recently and found that raffle items and special raffles along with games are doing better then our live auction. The CWA dinner if held in Vermont would be the cheapest to get into and the most bang for your dollar, even I can't offer an open bar for $45 and my dinner is the cheapest in the state for $60 a head. I'm down from 70 two years ago to 43 attendees this year. I put out a small survey to my group and got back that a useful large item door prize would get more people in the door, along with more raffle and instead of single raffle items having raffle packages like a goose hunting package including shells decoys and a call or blind.


It looks like to me that the age structure of the groups is changing as well. This year I had kids in there teens with their parents and then a large gap in the 25-35 year range. My next largest group was in their late forties and early fifties. I know none of my friends ages 25-30 can afford to go because they have a new dog a new house a new kid and old college debt.


This next year I will be doing a raffle before the dinner to make enough money to drop the meal cost off of the ticket price to help get some people to go. I also plan on contacting heating companies (my dinner is in March) in hopes of getting some fuel donated and possibly discounts and looking into businesses in the construction/home goods/clothing/food areas for useful items for my raffles. I'm also entertaining the idea of getting a Wii game console to pay duck hunting video games as a game for prizes for the younger crowd.


I hope you guys can get it to turn around I know up here attendance is down across the board for DU and some committees aren't willing to change their formula.


Eddie
 
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Jim - I joined DU in 1968, still volunteer for our local chapter, and have donated paintings and decoys every year since 1982 to many chapters, and organizations. The Hay Day's of the 70's & 80's when we sold out the banquets and turned folks away due to fire regs, etc. are over. We baby boomers were brought up and taught our outdoor lifestyle by the Greatest Generation, and in turn try to do the same for those that follow us.

Each year now I see less and less attendance, due to many factors. Used to be there were only a few national and local conservation organizations, now there are many. Folks pick and choose where they want to spend their time and money. Decoy shows and contests are seeing the same thing. As for "Are we dying off?" The answer is YES. I doubt you will see a economic driving force as the Baby Boomers in the future.

That said it is even more important now that we mentor and instruct as many folks, young and old as we can before we get Planted.
 
Wow, $45 is really reasonable. I normally see $74-80 down here.

I can tell you that since I became aware of DU back in the mid-80's, down here at least, DU has had an image of being for upper/upper-middle class folk. Banquets were filled with doctors, lawyers, high end professionals, the big ranchers, etc... Common folk didn't seem very welcome. That has changed some, but their events are still seen as high-dollar.

I can tell you that forking out $80 plus raffle tickets/auctions is simply not in my budget. And I am betting its not in the budget of some of these younger, "duck dynasty" kids either.
 
carl you are right , at 120.00 a couple or 75 a single that is a lot also after a while you can only have so many prints . Now you have to pick and choose what to attend it is not cheap.
 
It's the economy. Discretionary spending follows the fortunes of people. One day it will get better.
 
$35-$45 around here. But numbers have been declining for the last decade. Personally .... A a DU District Chairman ... That has been to too many banquets.... The old and awesome are dieing off.... And the young want to party. I really think we have lost our path. I don't think the young have the date dictation or care that previous generations did. They either don't care about the future of the sport, or don't understand the need for the conservation groups. I guess the can play Duck hunt or something.... And some damn computer will show them how wonderful mother nature was before man destroyed it.... ( do I sou d like a crotchety grumpy old man?)
 
Jim, I think there are several reasons for the declining involvement in the fund raising events, not the least of which is an overall decline in the number of people who now hunt. Although Connecticut still has a pretty solid base of serious waterfowl hunters, there are fewer of us than existed several years ago. The overall age is also increasing. Several people have mentioned to me that the events that they attend, be that a DU, Delta, or CWA dinner have become rather stale. I believe that the organizations, though they originated as primarily waterfowl related, need to expand to other interests. The one non waterfowl related item in the auction, Chet Reneson's fishing print, was the high seller. Granted Chet's work is fantastic and he's well known, but most of us probably have all the duck pictures, etc. that we can hang on the walls. Beyond that, if there's a way to gain the attraction of other related wildlife/conservation interests and draw them to the dinner events, it couldn't hurt. I'm not sure if many of these "waterfowl" events are advertised outside of the membership lists. I have to believe that if each CWA member, who belongs to a gun club, fishing club, or any similar organization posted flyers advertising the events at their clubs, another group of potential attendees would be hit. The CWA event is as nice an event as I've attended and it is truly a shame that the attendance is falling. Maybe something as simple as changing the date might help. There's an awful lot to do this time of year and a lot less in March. Just my thoughts.
 
Personally, as far as CWA, typically the date is conflicting for me. It often falls on the closest sunday to my fathers birthday (april 5), so most often that takes priority. This year it did not, but I had my daughter for the day (wife works weekends) and we burn our babysitting time during the work week.

I also think in general that I would be more likely to go if it were a saturday night. To burn an entire early spring sunday afternoon is tough for a busy family, especially a young family like us. Always a lot going on.

As others have said, the banquets in general have become quite stale as Rich put it. I attend one DU event per year, and it is the one my college buddies put on, which is on a Saturday night in February. Not much else going on that time of year. I typically only buy raffle tickets for something big (a gun for example) or bid on unique items in the auction, like a hand carved decoy. I'm only 36 and have stacks of the same prints everyone else does collecting dust. I have plenty of plastic decoys, and could outfit a house entirely of "DU brand" goods from drinking glasses to towels, I don't need any more of that general raffle stuff.

Another thought, there seems to be a lot of ways to donate to a cause these days. Every weekend someone is doing a cancer run, or raising money for one thing or another. Maybe its just a function of social media so I am more aware of these things now than in the past, but people might be giving there expendable cash to other causes or outlets. Of course with everyone having a $100 phone bill every month and $150 cable/internet bill....maybe they just dont have the expendable cash!

I'm not sure what the answer is either, I know the obvious stuff has been tried, shooting events, and various summer type parties rather than stuffy wedding style banquets. Maybe we can set up a obstacle course that people can pay to run through and be hazed and post pictures all over the internet and use all the profits for the ducks!
 
Bill~

Your thoughts re "[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Maybe we can set up a obstacle course that people can pay to run through and be hazed and post pictures all over the internet and use all the profits for the ducks!" are probably on the right track BUT.....you forgot the kittens!!!!

All the best,

SJS
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I'm the chairman of the Fresno CWA Dinner. We were the largest dinner in the state last year with 525 people. We sell out every year and don't really try to sell tickets. We charge $75/man or $125/couple and have an open bar.

My advise for what it's worth:

Make it different than every other boring dinner. How many prints / wooden decoys does the average guy want? The answer is that most people want less of them than they already have. Quit getting the same boring crap from DU that every other dinner has. Get fishing and hunting trips, firewood, vacation home rentals, find a chef and do dinner for 8-10 at the winners house. Don't give away a bunch of the same boring shotguns. You get a lot more bang for your buck giving away rifles and pistols. Play couple fun games and have exciting people running them. Search out financially secure individuals in your community and give them a few free tickets one time. If they have fun, they will spend money and have a good likelihood of buying tickets the following year (Don't give the same people free tickets every year but search out new people and give away 6-8 tickets/year to build your dinners back up).

Everywhere you go and every time you spend money, you should be thinking "is this a possible donor to my dinner". If you have a contractor do work on your home, see if he will donate a $1-2,000 in free home improvement work. Get a gardener to donate 6-12 months of yard service. Get a tile guy to donate a shower re-tiling. People have two budgets, one is a hunting budget an one is a household budget. Tap into the home budget and the wives don't get mad at the husbands for spending money. Then give those donors a tax receipt or a free table at the dinner or free raffle tickets. Never give them everything so they still have to spend some $$$.
 
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