by This week I’m at the NRA board and committee meetings being held in Reston, Virginia. The decision was made earlier that the fall and winter board meetings would be held in Virginia to cut travel costs. By being here, travel for all the associated staff that would normally have to travel to a meeting location in Texas or another state is eliminated. Whereas expenses like this in the past were fluffed off, they are not any more.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are dedicated to committee meetings. The new leadership is committed to reinvigorating committees, reducing their numbers, and demanding results from committees. Just as importantly, committees are no longer little islands acting independently from the rest of the committees. Every committee meeting that I’ve attended has been very aware of the impact of their work and their decisions on other areas of the NRA.
There seems to be a new synergy. Thus, when the Membership Committee pushes for a phone app there is an awareness that this app can be used by NRA-ILA to send out legislative alerts. Likewise, the Legislative Policy Committee recognizes that Second Amendment policies formulated in their committee will have an impact on attracting new members and retaining existing ones.
Wednesday committees for me were the Audit Committee and the Membership Committee. The Audit Committee focused on the draft of the Form 990 and I will have a full report on the Form 990 when it is released. It would be violating my fiduciary duties to go into any further detail on the draft. The Membership Committee is committed to the development of a phone app for both the iPhone and Android platforms. There is a recognition that many of the younger generations use their phone for everything. Working with both the NRA’s in-house IT team and one of our outside marketing vendors, our goal is to have this app ready before the end of the year if not sooner. Naturally, such an app will be a work in progress as more features will be added to it over time.
My Thursday committee meetings were for the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Committee and the Legislative Policy Committee. Matt Fleming is the new director of Hunting, Conservation, and Ranges replacing Peter Churchbourne who has moved over to the NRA Foundation as their Executive Director. He provided an update on hunting programs such as Hunters for the Hungry. We also heard from Keith Mark with Hunter Nation. Their work in energizing hunters to become active voters using their data driven approach provided the margin of victory in many swing states. There is a recognition that hunters are not necessarily 2A supporters and 2A supporters are not necessarily supporters of hunting initiatives. The job for both the NRA and the independent Hunter Nation is to bring both groups into alignment.
The Legislative Policy Committee heard reports from John Commerford, Director of NRA-ILA, and the directors for State and Local Affairs, Federal Affairs, and International Affairs. Much of the discussion was about the budget reconciliation act and the zeroing out of the taxes on suppressors and short-barreled firearms. The committee also heard reports from the chairs of other committees such as Grassroots and Media as there is a significant interplay between what Leg Policy does and its impact on the grassroots as well as the public image of the NRA.
I don’t have any official committee meeting scheduled for today until late this afternoon. However, I do intend to drop into the Legal Affairs Committee after lunch.
My overall impression of the last few days is that everyone, reformers and Old Guard, are committed to working together to bring the NRA back. I hope that continues on to the Board Meeting on Saturday.
Thank you John. I really appreciate the updates.
Best Wishes, Mark Shuell
Sounds like a decent start to things – and hopefully most topics have already been discussed widely beforehand so that committee meetings are review for those who weren’t paying attention and quick opportunity for amendments/fixes/adjustments with a vote on an action recommendation.
“Membership Committee pushes for a phone app there is an awareness that this app can be used by NRA-ILA to send out legislative alerts.”
I would remind the committee that the IT staff can’t figure out how to add PDF links to their Member Management webpage, despite having done so for a court-ordered document already. It’s September. The members clearly supported documents to be posted in April.
That said, what’s the value in the app? I can come up with ideas for ILA push alerts for those who closely follow legislation, but what of my membership stuff do I need? I see so much risk in doing this quickly to the point that it doesn’t actually fit a need or want. Has there been any survey done to find out what members would find useful?
You’re likely better off waiting an additional 6 months to get some features working well that serve members, not just another set of links for making donations. Also, keep in mind that signing up shouldn’t be a priority because most people who seek out the app will already be members. Renewals are fine to pitch when their memberships are running out. It’s just that you need to remember that young people can already sign up on their phones. The extra steps of getting an app & signing in – not likely to be done until they are members.
I’m open for a true all-in-one app that includes stuff like useful conference features at NRA major events (GAOS, Annual Meeting, etc.) that could also likely have a “lite” aspect that goes live during non-NRA events where NRA is present and maybe sends a push alert to come support NRA staff at an event happening nearby. It isn’t useful for lifers, but if recruiters actually submitted calendars where they are confirmed to be present at a gun show or other *public* event and ready to help people renew or upgrade to life, that could be mildly handy if it was incorporated with like an NRA around you like calendar of events relevant to gun folks that NRA knows about.
I notice that competitions isn’t mentioned, but that is a whole different 🗑️ 🔥. It would be nice if there was a competitor side of things that also included a place where participating clubs running sanctioned events could have their stuff targeted once a year – help the clubs, help their matches, help yourselves. Right now, the way they force competitors to DIG for any match they don’t already know about (including many links that just send you in a circular loop in those sections of the website), our people who ran matches see no value in NRA involvement even when they are running according to NRA rules. That’s a BIG problem when people already doing things that invite NRA engagement don’t see the NRA as providing any value at all.
An app would provide considerable opportunity for useful data collection (good kind, not bad kind) to help target better messages. Like. oh, this person hasn’t opened 2 push notices about crazy life upgrade deals we tried on her in the last year, she’s probably not into that. But, she did look at the calendar and check out that ILA fundraiser listed 50 miles away. Maybe we do a push to her if we get one scheduled within 20 miles or hit up a particularly special Friends dinner that maybe Hamlin will attend. Surely Advancement have some insights into metrics to look for that can turn a $500 donor into a $1,500 donor that could apply. (Those same metrics and signs may also be helpful in thinking about increasing non-donation-based event engagement.)
Make it a perk that 100% clubs could get to choose to be featured in a section if they are actively recruiting or get their classes highlighted beyond the NRA training website or something. Likely there need to be limits built in because there are definitely people who would abuse any push notifications for their events, but some kind of feature where gun folks could find these things could be useful. (BTW, this would also give other departments metrics to use to pitch things like business affiliation or 100% club status. “Clubs that are featured at the top saw, on average, 120 more clicks on their listed events than clubs with sanctioned events that are listed lower down on the calendar.”)
I realize all of these specifics fit the work in progress aspect and you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough. Just make sure that at launch there are features that actually make members want to engage with NRA and that the focus is on member service to want to be part of the community rather than just another place where staff can claim they post donation links and everyone applauds without asking – does this actually deliver anything we weren’t getting before?
PLEASE ensure the app works well before deploying it. Young folks are not likely to give you a second chance; they expect digital apps to work properly the first time. I’ve learned this from other organizations that see apps as something the young folks want. Yes, they do, but a bad one is worse than none.
Please also be aware of the impression that the NRA is a Republican party mouthpiece. In my mind, that’s gotten worse, not better, over the past few years.
I agree that it needs to work and work well from the beginning. Our digital marketing consultant is helping design the layout and the programming is being done in-house.
I can’t disagree with that impression. Part of the problem is that pro-gun Democrats have generally disappeared from the national scene and even so in most states. They either got defeated in a primary or they changed their tune when it was time to step up to a higher office. You only have to look to Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to see that.
All excellent points Bitter, more reason I’d like to see you run for the Board.
President Bachenberg has appointed a number of new people to the various competition committees, and they have brought a bunch of good ideas. We’ve directed Doug to take action to bring the NRA into the 21st century for registration, scoring, and archiving match data, and to make information about upcoming matches easier to find and get registered for.
Member benefits are a huge focus point for the app, not just membership info and events notices, and certainly not more begging for money, but coupons and discounts available to our members on a wide variety of brands and shops, information about places to shoot, rules and etiquette, perhaps gun-friendly vs. gun-unfriendly businesses near a user, and much more. I’ve stressed that I want to be among the beta testers as the app comes online, and I’d like to see most interested Directors, as well as a number of active, knowledgeable members like you on that list as well. We have folks with a surprising amount of technical knowledge and expertise on the Board and staff, as well as our outside consultants, so I’m hopeful this will roll-out smoothly and be truly useful. We’re very open to suggestions and ideas.
It was a good series of meetings.
On the 990’s, I want to stress that those forms are always a year behind, so what we’re working on releasing now is the 990 for 2024 — the last year that WLP was involved, and the year that we were wrapping up the New York trial and battling with the WLP loyalists for control of the Board. While there were many significant changes within the NRA in 2024, the biggest swings have only been in effect since May of 2025.
I’m amazed at the progress we’ve made since May 2024. We’ve accomplished far more than I ever dreamed possible, especially considering that last Saturday’s Board meeting was only the 5th meeting we’ve had since I was elected to the Board in 2024. We only meet 3 times a year, but we’re holding electronic committee meetings regularly between Board meetings, laying out plans and preparing the agenda for when we meet as a body.
I’ve been questioned about the cost of our in-person meetings, and it’s definitely expensive, but the move back to holding meetings in Virginia is saving us about $100k per meeting, and the value of meeting face-to-face is substantial. This last meeting only ran for about 13 and a half hours, which was several hours shorter than the previous 4 meetings I’ve participated in. It’s grueling, but we do get a lot accomplished — in the Board meeting, the committee meetings, in the hallways and side rooms, and in the courtyard after dinner, getting to know one another better, sharing war stories of hunts, competitions, pet loads, and political campaigns.
I’m really glad to have John on the Board, and really appreciate the folks who see the progress we’re making and who are supporting our efforts.