Winter Musing
by Tony Geyelin

WHY ARE YOU A MEMBER? Do you live along the canal, and see your annual dues as a small and necessary price to help insure that the view from your back window encompasses more than a muddy ditch? Is it out of a sense of civic pride and responsibility – you’re an area resident who appreciates what our canal represents as a historical/recreational/educational resource? Perhaps it is because you use the canal as you bird, hike, boat, and fish? Or is it because someone gave you a gift membership?
Whatever the reason -- and I hope there are multiple reasons – it is important that all of us who serve as the stewards of the Schuylkill Canal Association remember that the organization’s growth and continued success depends on our ability to understand the answers, and the implications to be drawn from those answers, to this most basic question.

In 2003 we gained almost 100 new members and raised over $20,000 in corporate gifts and sponsorships. While I am delighted with these numbers, over the next year we need to add at least 150 additional members and some $30,000 more than last year in new corporate member contributions to meet the commitments we made two years ago to the William Penn Foundation in return for its generous grant to help create our Executive Director position. To do this we have to first make sure we do the best job we can in satisfying the varied needs of you, our membership. And then we have to aggressively market all that we offer to as wide an audience as we can reach.

While how to best get our story out is a work in progress, we have, with the significant help of Board member Strickland Kneass, reached agreement on what the message is: We are much more than two plus miles of a scenic canal with an historic Locktender's House and a soon-to-be-restored Lock 60. We are a significant variety of markedly different things that appeal to a range of very diverse interests. We are a wonderful venue for canoeing, kayaking and paddleboats, with boat launches to facilitate access to the canal and the Schuylkill River. We offer in the canal, and along the river, excellent fishing. We have miles of scenic trails for hiking, biking, running, dog walking, nature study. We are a wheel chair friendly facility, with nearly a mile of flat, paved towpath and new, handicapped accessible restrooms. We are a significant destination for bird watchers and for industrial history buffs. We provide educational sessions on a variety of topics in conjunction with our monthly open house meetings at the Locktender's House. We offer free music through our Music in The Park program, a summer festival on Canal Day and a festive Luminaria in December. We serve our community through the court-supervised ARD program, with Board member Dan Daley donating hundreds of hours of his time each year coordinating the SCA’s participation in this process.

In short, we offer many varied experiences of significant interest and value to you, our members, and to so many others in our communities and beyond.

So let me close with the same question for you: WHY ARE YOU A MEMBER? What among what is listed above (or that I have failed to mention) particularly attracts you to the Canal? And what should we do differently, or better? Let me know by e-mail at schuylkillcanal@mindspring.com, or by phoning Betsy Daley at 610 917-0021. Your input will allow us to serve you better, and help us focus on how best to market ourselves to others.

Thank you.