How does one start a new Prius club

There's a moribund club here on PriusChat for MO- St. Louis and another for MO - Southwest which you visited earlier this month. If you PM Danny, he may start a MO - Mid-state forum for you.

I organize an HSD Meetup group (formerly Prius, but we welcome HyCams and HiHys now too) in Portland OR area, see my sig. I use Meetup.com which has lots of handy features for starting a club. It costs a few bucks to be an organizer, but the tools it provides are useful.

As for officers/hierarchy/rules, that's pretty much up to you. We take short trips for fun places and have lunch and talk about our cars on the third Saturday of the month. I'm in charge only in the sense that I ask members where they'd be intersted in going next month. Members come when they want to and can. When I ask for donations they are generous.

Send me an email if you want to know more. I was never in a car club before either.

 

all I did back in 2004 after getting our 1st Prius was make business cards and flyers. Went to the Toyota dealer, the Honda dealer and the Ford dealer to hang flyers (made them hybrid-neutral, so not to make the Prius 'seem' so superior, ha, ha), then went around town putting business cards on windshields of hybrid cars.

We met every month at an ice-cream place (coffee place in the winter). Usually talked up hybrids, with a drive for MPG during the summer months. I had about 20 on an e-mail list and 6 or 7 show up each month. It was VERY casual, but fun to share in the hybrid goodness. I do hope it continues on without me.

I'm going to do the same here in Harrisburg, PA...just need to complete the move from SD...and that hasn't been easy! maybe by fall...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(finman @ May 23 2007, 09:00 AM) [snapback]448065[/snapback]</div>

Please do! I would make the drive from Lancaster to be sure!

 

priussoris

There's a national "MEETUP GROUP" web site which provides services for many interest groups. We had a allas Area Prius Meetup Group" until a little over a year ago. The "Organizer" dropped his role after the national site imposed a quarterly fee for providing their services and he would have to pay the fee up front and collect from the attendees to reimburse himself.

The positives: They provided the capacity to maintain a list of all members, notices of meetings' times and places, a photo section (we had as many as 16 Prius lined up in a restaurant parking lot), business cards to promote the group, etc. The only negative was the fee. We met usually on a Saturday or Sunday near noon near a restaurant which could provide adequate parking and seating in a group for our usual 20-25 attendees.

Here's a link to the national organization (although their site was temporarily down when I posted this message):

http://prius.meetup.com/create/

There's also a section here in PriusChat in which you can announce meetings.

 

Start small.
Make at a time convenient for you.
Announce it on PriusChat, CleanMPG, GreenHybrid, PriusOnline, and the appropriate yahoo groups.

The main thing is just do it.

If you set up a time, they will come.
Don't worry if one or two people show up.
Just keep doing it.
Do it for yourself.
You can decide later how formal or informal you want to be

The Madison Hybrid Group has anywhere from 3 to 50 members show up at each meeting.
We're a pretty informal group.
We intially met only sporadically whenever the desire rose to have a meeting.
Now we meet every other month.

When Milwaukee guys wanted to start their own club, I offered my encouragement. Now they have a mailing list of over 100 members. We then offered our support to Tony for his Chicago Prius Group as well, and I have to say, his last meeting sounded like a smashing success. In a few weeks our three hybrid clubs are getting together to go see a Brewers baseball game.

We've done everything from offering our time to shuttle senior citizens for a dance, to having the first ever Hybrid Car Cruise-in.

You can make it whatever you want.
PM me your phone number and I'd be happy to call you to discuss ideas and offer support.

Once we got the club going a few of us took on the idea of starting Hybridfest, just so even more hybrid owners could get together. So once your club is up and running we hope to see you all there and offer even more support.

Whatever the outcome, I wish you the best of luck!

Just do it!