NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Norrag News reaches 1600 members: success in the numbers game?
By Robert Palmer, NORRAG, Edinburgh and Amman
KeywordsNORRAG, membership numbers
Summary
This piece examines how the membership of Norrag is growing and asks whether specific attention should be paid to certain regions and groups that are under-represented in the Norrag ranks.
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Membership changes April 2004 ? Sept 2007
Since April 2004, membership of NORRAG has increased by approximately 1,200 members: from 415 individuals to over 1,600 by September 2007 (Table 1). Up until December 2006, the average monthly increase in membership was approximately 15-24 individuals a month. However, since December 2006 the average monthly increase in membership has increased to 62. This is a result of new efforts to target potential members as well as changes to the norrag.org website which made most articles accessible to google type search engines from February 2007.
Table 1. Total membership April 2004 ? Sept 2007, including average new members/month for selected intervals
[for the table please view the pdf version]
The period December 2006 ? September 2007
Overall there has been a significant increase in NORRAG membership over the last 10 months (Dec 06 ? Sept 07); membership has increased dramatically from approximately 900 to over 1,600 individuals. Membership has increased in every region, in both relative and absolute terms. However, this growth has been uneven: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), East and South Asia / Pacific, Europe and North America appear to be gaining much more members (in absolute terms at least) when compared to the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA), Central Asia / Russia and Latin America / Caribbean.
During the period Dec 06 ? Sept 07 membership in SSA increased by approximately 120, from 204 to 321 members. In East and South Asia / Pacific membership has increased by approximately 130, from 178 to 312 members. In Europe, numbers have increased by 220, from 437 to 657 members. In North America (Canada and USA), membership has increased by approximately 110, from 93 to 203 members. However, in MENA membership has only increased by 18, from 12 to 30 members (Dec 06 ? Sept 07). In Central Asia / Russia over the same period, membership only increased by 5, from 6 to 11 members. Likewise, in Latin America / Caribbean membership has only increased by approximately 20, from 61 to 80 members. It is suspected that the difficulties in attracting membership from these latter three regions is both an issue of language (NORRAG?s current weakness in reaching Arabic, Russian and Spanish speaking groups) and content (there is not much in Norrag News on these regions!).
Main country groupings per region
SSA: Mostly in Anglophone countries (80% membership in SSA), especially South Africa (64), Ghana (42), Nigeria (42), Kenya (25), Tanzania (19) and Uganda (17). Only Francophone country with sizeable membership is Rwanda (19).
MENA: Largest membership in Jordan (7) and Morocco (5).
Central Asia / Russia: no significant groups.
East Asia / Pacific: Together India (75) and China (50) make up 40% of all membership in this region. Other substantial groupings are found in Japan (39), Australia (36) and Pakistan (29).
Europe: The UK (206) alone accounts for over 30% of all European membership. Other substantial groupings are found in Switzerland (86), France (70), Netherlands (61) and Germany (56). Smaller, but sizeable groupings found in Italy (28), Sweden (24) and Denmark (20).
Latin America / Caribbean: Largest membership in Chile (14) and Mexico (11).
North America: USA (155) accounts for over three-quarters of all membership in this region. Canada (48) accounts for the remaining quarter.
Where are we going? (And how do we get there?)
Should we be concerned about these numbers in MENA, Central Asia / Russia and Latin America / Caribbean? Should we be concerned about the dominance of Anglophone members in SSA? Is the objective of Norrag to reach everybody, everywhere; in effect to go for world domination? If we are to outreach to these groups, what is the best strategy to adopt?
If you have any thoughts on Norrag?s membership patterns, or suggestions regarding how we might proceed, please get in touch with us: rob.palmer@norrag.org
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