arranged at suitable opportunities in the future. I would like to thank the President of the Korea Branch, Dr. H. Underwood, for his assistance and amicability on this occasion. I shall, on behalf of the Society, shortly be writing to the parent branch and the other branches with suggestions for improving contacts generally.
Membership
In perhaps the first place in Council's concerns is the state of our Membership. It is always difficult to say what the most desirable size for a Society such as ours is. If it is too small, then the income from Membership Subscriptions (which represents by far our largest source of income) will be too low to meet the expenses of our activities. If it is too large, then Members will find they cannot easily get onto the tours and other activities organised by the Society. To hit the happy medium is not easy. In practice, we have to see what the practical implications are for the size of the Society at any date, and then to see whether we need to take action to try to get an increase.
The changing demographic characteristics of the expatriate community in Hong Kong make this question of membership even more critical. Our membership is predominantly from the expatriate resident community in Hong Kong. For at least the last 25 years Council has tried to increase our membership from the local Chinese community, but so far with only moderate success. We have to accept, therefore, that changes to the make-up of the expatriate community will have immediate effects on the Society. When I joined the Society, in the mid-1970s, a substantial part of our Membership was of expatriates who expected to spend the whole of their working life in Hong Kong, or at least expected to live here for a decade or so. In these circumstances, our membership tended to be rather static. Relatively few people joined the Society for just a year or two, and the percentage of our membership which resigned and thus had to be replaced each year was low. Nowadays, however, relatively few expatriates come to Hong Kong for a long time, still less for the whole of their working life. Overwhelmingly, the expatriate community in Hong Kong consists, today, of people who will live here for only a few years, often only two or three. As such, we have to accept that a very high percentage of our membership will resign after only a couple of years. Last year, in fact, and the year before that, about a fifth of the entire ordinary membership
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arranged at suitable opportunities in the future. I would like to thank the President of the Korea Branch. Dr. H. Underwood, for his assistance and amicability on this occasion. I shall, on behalf of the Society, shortly be writing to the parent branch and the other branches with suggestions for improving contacts generally.
Membership
In perhaps the first place in Council's concerns is the state of our Membership. It is always difficult to say what the most desirable size for a Society such as ours is. If it is too small, then the income from Membership Subscriptions (which represents by far our largest source of income) will be too low to meet the expenses of our activities. If it is too large, then Members will find they cannot easily get onto the tours and other activities organised by the Society. To hit the happy medium is not easy. In practice, we have to see what the practical implications are for the size of the Society at any date, and then to see whether we need to take action to try to get an increase.
The changing demographic characteristics of the expatriate community in Hong Kong make this question of membership even more critical. Our membership is predominantly from the expatriate resident community in Hong Kong. For at least the last 25
years Council has tried to increase our membership from the local Chinese community, but so far with only moderate success. We have to accept, therefore, that changes to the make-up of the expatriate community will have immediate effects on the Society. When I joined the Society, in the mid-1970s, a substantial part of our Membership was of expatriates who expected to spend the whole of their working life in Hong Kong, or at least expected to live here for a decade or so. In these circumstances, our membership tended to be rather static. Relatively few people joined the Society for just a year or two, and the percentage of our membership which resigned and thus had to be replaced each year was low. Nowadays, however, relatively few expatriates come to Hong Kong for a long time, still less for the whole of their working life. Overwhelmingly, the expatriate community in Hong Kong consists, today, of people who will live here for only a few years, often only two or three. As such, we have to accept that a very high percentage of our membership will resign after only a couple of years. Last year, in fact, and the year before that, about a fifth of the entire ordinary membership
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