Discussion: How many members does OUSA have?

How many members does OUSA have?

Couldn't find the info on their site.

Assuming you're not asking about how many clubs are members of OUSA, and you're asking about people, the answer depends on whether you are counting "memberships" (i.e. membership accounts), or "heads" (i.e. number of people total, regardless of how many membership type (e.g. taking into account all the folks grouped as families and the like).

It's easier to answer the former. Rounded off, there are currently ~550 individual (lifetime + yearly) memberships, ~420 family memberships, and ~250 junior & student memberships, for a total of ~1,200 memberships.

In terms of "heads", it's roughly double the number of memberships.

And clubs may have many more members who are not OUSA members.

Yes, every club that I can think of has (sometimes far) more non-OUSA members than OUSA members amongst their own (club) members.

There are also some - but not many - "at large" OUSA members who are not members of any club.

Thanks for being so specific about what the numbers mean!

Are there any rough estimates floating around as to how many "orienteers" are in the US? (how many individual people participate on a semi-regular basis)

Also, to clarify- when people say, "number of starts" in a year.. that means that 1 person could be counted 10 times if they go to 10 meets, right?

Thanks!

Glen Schorr is probably the best person to give you estimates; and yes, "starts" generally means the number of entries - solo or groups - that start a given course and get a time. So a group of 3 people orienteering together and collectively getting a time (as a group) count as 1 start.

How many orienteers are in the US, or any country, is tough to estimate for several reasons. How much do you have to orienteer to qualify as doing it on a "semi-regular" basis? But more importantly, how much orienteering takes place on permanent courses? Or completely outside of the OUSA purview, like at JROTC- or BSA-only events and programs (example: Jamborees), summer camps, schools, and adventure races of various flavors?

Ok everyone. Count off.
1!

Tom - that will only tell us how many OUSA members are on attackpoint. But I guess I'm "2" in your count.

This will never do. To put this on a proper scientific footing, we need to capture a random sample of people engaged in orienteering in the US, document their Attackpoint usage or lack thereof, and then extrapolate from the known number of US-based AP users to determine how many active orienteers there are in the country. Of course, possible sources of bias may include that the AP-using portion of the orienteering population may prove harder to capture than the non-AP-using residual.

3!

jtorranc - this process is also highly susceptible to corruption by unscrupulous foreigners.

4!

I'm guessing ~10,000.

Interesting that Australia's national membership numbers are about 50% higher than the US's, although the membership structure is rather different - in Australia there are three levels of organisation (national, state and club), and being a member of a state association automatically makes you a national member. There are club members that are not state members, but not huge numbers of them in most states.

100! >> 10,000

OUSA Board from there recent reports View reports for February 2012
On page 5 there are some numbers on members and historic data.

OUSA members
End of 2010
Total memberships - 1314
Total members (noses) - 2156

End of 2011
Total memberships - 1241
Total members (noses) - 2110


Club membership
End of 2010 – 60 clubs - 5626 members*
*as calculated for charter


Side note, anyone from the web team, where might these reports be stored. I could only find this one 2011 Board Member Annual Reports by following an old twitter link.
I was reading some stuff and wanted to refer back to something to refresh and confirm what I seem to remember but can't find a place where these pre meeting reports are stored. Perhaps they could be appended to the minutes. I didn't look too carefully if that was the case but they weren't with the ones I checked.

I don't think they were compiled / issued before last year's AGM.

I've added links to board report compilations on the Board Minutes page. They exist, as far as I know, for the AGM (annual reports), Oct 2011, and February 2012 (and they appear on the page before the associated meeting).

I'll try to remember to keep posting them there in the future. :-)

Ok thanks the Oct one seems to be what I was looking for. Must have just been scanning links less thoroughly when I didn't find it with initial searches.