Be My Guest… or Be a Member
Ah yes… it is a nice day and everyone has met at the dealership for a ride. The ride calendar in the newsletter listed this as a “Closed Ride”.
Note #1: Closed Ride = Chapter members and no more than one guest per member.
Each guest must sign an event release form. (Members sign the annual chapter membership enrollment and release form which covers all closed rides for the year)
Note #2: Who is considered a guest? A guest is anyone who is not a member of our chapter.
Here are a couple of scenarios for you:
· Individual is a H.O.G. member from another chapter. By National H.O.G. rules, they are still considered a guest to our chapter, so they must sign a release form for the day.
· Individual was previously a member of our chapter but has not renewed their chapter membership. They need to renew prior to participating in the ride or event or else they are a guest and must sign a release form for the day.
Basically there are no ifs, ands or buts here. In the above scenarios, each individual will have to sign a release for the day. This is the process required by H.O.G. in which the chapter officers/volunteers are protected.
Does the guest need to be a friend or accompanied by a chapter member? No. For instance, they may just happen to be at the dealership that morning and want to go with our chapter on the ride. They are welcomed to join in on the ride and are invited to go along. One of the officers will probably ask a couple of questions of you, like… have you ridden with a group before. We will give you a brief overview of group riding techniques, hand signals, etc. and of course get you to sign a release form! During breaks along the way, we may ask you how you are doing, talk about the riding and the fun the chapter has. We will let you know what H.O.G. and our H.O.G. Chapter is about. Before the end of the event or ride we will also invite you to join!
Here is a question we receive often related to guests: How many times can they attend rides, meetings and other events as a guest?
Good question and the answer is, it all depends, and will be handled on a case-by-case basis. For example, we may consider it an issue with someone continually attending our chapter activities and never joining? Which typically means, you don’t have a “guest” problem, you have a “membership” problem. Currently, our chapter does not have a guest ‘policy’, however, down the road we may decide a guest policy is needed in order to decide on what a reasonable number of rides and/or events a guest can attend to get an idea of what the chapter is about. For example, should we provide 1 free pass? Or 2 or 3?
We naturally want our chapter to grow, but we also want to be fair to the members who have paid their dues to belong as well. Habitual guests obviously enjoy the chapter if they are attending many events, so we will invite you to join and get signed up.