Arrl Fees and Magazine changes

Hello ham radio world, and I hope you are enjoying your holiday season! I have heard many grumblings about the ARRL updating their fees for membership and removing the print magazine subscription unless you pay an additional fee. The fee schedule is here on the ARRL site. If you look you’ll see that $59 per year will give you membership to the ARRL and 4 digital magazine subscriptions.

People that I have talked to have ranged in reaction from outrage to indifference (assumingly because they have just lost faith in the ARRL or already weren’t members). It is interesting to me how adamant people are that this is a very bad decision. I’d like to propose a few thoughts though, and as in most cases I can see both sides of the situation. I’m sure I’ll ruffle some feathers on both sides of this one though.

Lets discuss the magazine first.

The ARRL has for many years now made QST, QEX, National Contesting Journal (NCJ), and On the Air available for digital download for FREE with your membership. In my opinion this is a fantastic benefit! When I became an amateur radio operater in 1999 I was ~14 years old and like most teenagers had no money. On the occasion when I did have money I had to weigh my priorities and spent my cash on radios, tower maintenance, upgrading coax and antennas, etc. The idea of spending several dollars an issue for QEX was a pipedream. I would go visit my uncle who would sometimes have an active subscription and read his magazines, and to drive my point home this is how I was able to read the ARRL Handbook as well. Both of these publications were very interesting to me and increased my knowledge in electronics greatly. NOW I can just download QEX for free. I still have to purchase the handbook, and I’m ok with that as they are valuable. I don’t buy a handbook every year but really don’t need to. QEX though is a huge benefit that comes with membership now. QST on the other hand only usually has one or two real articles, and usually only half of that is of real interest to me. So, when I heard that the included subscription would now be an additional fee for a print/mailed copy, I definitely shrugged and moved on, personally. I’ll definitely download the magazine and see what article piques my interest, but its not a major loss to not have it in print. Especially when you consider that as a horder (like most hams) I can’t throw these things away and it just takes up so much space to keep the old ones around, that I’ll never re-read.

The membership fee increase of $10 per year ($35 if you count keeping the printed magazine subscription) is material. 20% increase without the magazine charge and 71% increase if you plan to keep the magazine. This coupled with an ongoing decrease in membership says to me that the organization is struggling. I really do hope that we can curb that with the additional funds generated, and put a focus on prioritizing where each dollar goes. Trying to find ways to increase members’ perceived value of membership, and/or drastically improve what the lobbying efforts results are.

All of that being said, I agree that we should have increased dues, and can honestly understand why removing the default print magazine from membership is correct. As a business (even though its not a for-profit business), you have to make difficult decisions to continue to exist. This is why I hope the board takes seriously the move they’ve made and make great strides to strategically shift the organization. This is an existential moment for the ARRL. The ARRL VEC-filed license applications fell 15% from 2021 to 2022, Membership through 2022 and 2023 is at least below projections, and it seems that the organization is disassociated with its membership. Total Assets for 21->22 fell $5,202,775 (13.5% of 2021 total assets). So membership and assets are both in material decline. All of this while we see record increases in costs and labor. Every business, whether for profit or not has increased its prices, and I’d expect nothing less from the ARRL, so please don’t read my words here as a negative. The sobering truth is the cost increase was a requirement to keep living in the world that is increasing cost. The question I have is what can the ARRL do to reverse the trend of falling membership, falling new license exams, and increase the perception of value of the organization to its membership?

If you have noticed I use the phrase ‘perception of value’, and wonder what I’m on about, you are focusing on the right part. The ARRL has a few functions in our world, and provides value that isn’t always fast to notice, and isn’t always visible to every ham in the US/World. The mission statement ‘To advance the art, science, and enjoyment of Amateur Radio.’ is pretty clear on what is supposed to be happening with the organization. However, if amateur radio operators are coming to the ARRL less and less to enter the hobby (decline in VEC new license applications), and membership is also declining it makes me think that a huge focus needs to be made toward engaging with communities to create new hams more and more, and then big strides in how we support those hams as they enter the hobby (the enjoyment of Amateur Radio part of the statement). I think that there is a pretty solid investment and even output from the labs at the ARRL for the art/science part, but I’m curious if to engage the youth, and the likely new candidates of entry in to the hobby if we need a new approach. Instead of focusing on publishing articles to the magazine that is no longer included in membership, why can’t we put a major focus on social media, and other medium for content. The ham radio Youtube position is pretty great, but most of the youtubers in search of monetizing their channels turn into a giant advertisement stream. The ARRL has the upper hand here, with the research and work done in the organization. They have some of the smartest engineers that could provide major education value to a vastly wider audience. This could be used to funnel membership to the organization. The only video content I’ve seen from the ARRL has been in the form of trying to advertise printed publications or things that the ARRL sells. What if we took the same submissions for publication in QST and made it into great video content? Either by allowing user submitted videos and have the staff at the ARRL post edit for production, and maybe even add commentary, or allowing written submission still, and having the ARRL experts get on video and educate around the proposed ideas/projects/etc?

The ARRL website is a vast pool of knowledge. There is literal tons of value in it, and none of it is easy to find. The world today functions on easy searchability, and ease of consumption of the content. If it isn’t in podcast or video format, I fear that we’ll see a continued downtrend in key performance metrics of the organization.

All of my ranting, rambling aside. I will happily pay the increased dues rate, because having an advocate in DC fighting for the hobby we love is mandatory. The small budget comparitively of our lobbyists to the big corporations drooling over our bandwidth is insane. I just hope that we can set a strategic path forward that corrects the losses in funds and membership so that we can keep fighting for the right to Ham on!

73 K5CV