“An increasing number of people want to identify with our organisation,” believes Leif Solheim of the Trekking Association in Stavanger.
The association is seeing its tenth consecutive year of growth in the number of members.
“We see that people have a positive impression of what we do and want to be part of it. That’s very stimulating,” Solheim says.
Over the past 20 years, the nation’s largest outdoor activities organisation has doubled its membership numbers, which are statistics matched by few other organisations.
In total, the Norwegian Trekking Association has 222,291 members. Around 7000 of these joined this year, an increase of 3.6 percent compared to last year.
742 new members
This increase is equivalent to that experience by the local Stavanger division. Including the 742 latest ones, the association has 21,374 members.
“We are naturally very pleased. Our goal for 2005 was an increase of 1000 members a year over the next five-year period. Many felt that to be an overly optimistic goal, but at the same time, we see it’s working out,” Solheim says.
In some of the nation’s local divisions, the increase in the number of members is up to 23 percent.
A trend
Head of communications at DNT, Merete Habberstad speculates as to whether this increase reflects current trends:
“It may have something to do with the current situation, I don’t know. However, in the past we’ve seen that times of financial troubles have given our organisation more members,” Habbarstad says.
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