The American Birding Association (ABA) is trying to increase its membership, and as part of this effort, “they” are changing it’s logo.  You can vote for what species will be featured in the new logo at http://www.aba.org/logo/.  One option is retaining the Red-billed Tropicbird, which has been used since 1971, but as Blake Maybank pointed out on BirdChat, it’s unclear if votes for that option will actually count.

If some bird other than Red-billed Tropicbird wins, I would guess that those votes did NOT count.  Why?  Because there are quite a few people who want to keep the Tropicbird, and there doesn’t appear to be any stand-outs among the other seven choices.  Those other candidates will split the “change” vote.  Each one will almost certainly get a small percentage of votes compared to the Tropicbird.

I’m not sure if the logo change in and of itself is supposed to attract new members or if it’s part of a rebranding of the organization to make it appeal to more people.  Based on what’s in the latest issue of Birding, I strongly suspect it’s the latter.  Now, I have no real background in marketing, advertising, psychology, etc., but this _is_ the internets, so I’ll still give you my opinion: I just don’t see it.  I don’t think the species depicted in the ABA’s logo makes any difference at all.  Does the Tropicbird really make the organization appear to be elitist?  Would something else, something more familiar, make it appear to be more welcoming to those not interested in chasing rare birds?  Have you ever “judged a book by its cover” in the case of a birding/conservation organization?

The ABA has listed ten new initiatives for the organization.  None of them are bad, but I question how much some of them will contribute to increasing membership.  Meanwhile, various factions have different opinions on the direction the organization should be headed.  Some want it to be more conservation-focused.  Others want it to be devoted to birding, much as it was when the ABA was first formed.

My opinions are mixed.  First, “conservation” is a very general term, and I’d like to see more specifics about that.  Will it mean being involved with purchasing land to protect habitats?  If so, would ABA members be allowed to access these properties?  Or will conservation efforts be more in the vein of lobbying for legislation?  Or something else?  Moving on to the other side, what exactly should an organization for birders be doing?  I can see how the ABA was vital in the 70s and 80s.  There was no other means for easily sharing information at the time.  But now with the internet, that role has been diminished, though there is still a need for a source of reliable, or at least semi-reliable, identification articles and birdfinding guides.

In the long run, the ABA needs to find ways to improve the value of membership.  They need a good answer when someone asks “Why should I join?”  Some of the new initiatives are directed towards that, such as new print publications and special content for members on its website, though of course we’ll have to wait to see if that’s really worth it.  Planning an American version of the British Bird Fair is interesting as well, though I don’t know if members will benefit from this any more than non-members.  One other thing that might be worth pursuing is negotiating discounts for members like the discounts members of AAA and AARP now enjoy.