mensa international journal ebruary 2012 mensa i nternat i ona l j ourna l / EX T RA / 05 Our Past Te history oMensa in China is a long and complicat ed one. O ver the years, there have been several unsuccessul attempts to orm Mensa China. Each time the ailed attempts aced the same major hurdles: 1) Members were scattered through- out China; travel time and costs were prohibitive 2) Only voluntary work was allowed and no private nancial assistance was permitted 3) Te local chapter must orm a non-prot organization rom the outset. Faced with these diculties, the early members struggled valiantlyto create an ideal organization. Bu t despite a lot otime and moneyspent, the membership stayed at about 50 and no breakthroughs were achieved by the volunteers or nearlya decade. Tis all nally changed when we attended the IBD meeting 2010, in New Zealand. At this meeting, we were able to meet with Michael Feenan and Executive Commit- tee members ace to ace. From the meeting, w e learned that t he orma- tion oa non-prot organization was not on the critical path to being rec- ognize d. We also learned that manyother national chapters had employed ull time stawho could then be re- lied upon to deliver on various work. Upon return, the membership raised unds amongst themselves, hired some ull-time staand began the work to become accepted as the newest chapter in Mensa. We quick- ly completed the minimum require- ments or recognition and submitted our application to ExComm. Soon ater the IBD meeting, Mensa China was ocially recognized by ExComm as an emerging National Mensa. Tis gave us legitimacy by having a direct link rom the MIL website to our website and also enabled us to test and recruit members on our own which paved the path or us to move orward to the next levels onational certication. Our Present Ater holding our elections in May2011, the new ocers othe emerg- ing Mensa China began to workto expand our membership and set an internal target to achieve Full National Chapter status by the 2012 IBD meeting. We devised a mem- bership recruitment campaign that combined television, print, social media, and campus seminars. From the publicity and marketing eorts, the website has received over 1,000 candidate requests or testing. In the next ew months we will be busyhandling the testing and conversion osuccessul candidates into our permanent memberships. Our Future How b ig will Mensa China b e? Te theoretical limit o2% translates to a membership o26 million people. Just achieving 1% othat limit would be 260,000 members, which is double the current membership oall oMensa currently. In China, achievi ng the minimum numbers or member- ship will not be our problem. In- stead, we will have to careully man- age the growth omembership. Tis will be achieved, mainly by limiting our testing and targeting potential candidate groups. Limiting membership or the rst ew years will have a ew big benets. Firstly, we will be able to organize controlled growth. Activi- ties can be planned, websites can be built, and many procedures can be careully written to prevent abuses in the uture. All this can happen without dealing with the unplanned chaos that can come rom viral growth. Secondly, we hope it will result in a more balanced member- ship as regards gender, age groups and proessional background. Lastly, it enables us to create benet rom unmet demand and improve the pub- mensa china the story of a 65-year-old organization’s newest emerging baby... Mensa China’s Chairman, Ayawawa Yeung
