X-Message-Number: 31646
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:44:55 -0400
From: 
Subject: Membership Growth: Alcor and the Cryonics Institute

    One of my least favorite things to do is answer
people when they ask me about the differences between
Alcor and the Cryonics Institute (CI). Contrary to
what anyone might expect, the purpose of this message
is simply to recount some facts about membership
growth in the two organizations rather than to
engage in breast-beating or invidious comparisons.
Data on the Alcor website prior to 1990 is better
than what is available for CI, and data concerning
funded CI Members is only available for the last
3 years. Alcor Members are funded by definition.

    Alcor annual Membership growth prior to 1983 was
in the single digits, and the same can be said for
CI annual Membership growth prior to 1994. Alcor's
Membership growth had a huge spurt in the early
1990s. With 84 new Members, 1991 is by far the
best year for growth in Alcor history. The worst
year for Alcor was in 1994 when it had a net loss
of 15 Members -- mostly to CryoCare. CI had a small
growth spurt in 1994 and 1995 (the only years of
double-digit growth before 1998), so CI may have
also picked-up some disgruntled Alcor Members
at that time.

   Alcor's annual Membership growth since 1989 has
been roughly linear, in the 25-50 range. Surprisingly,
the advent of the Internet does not seem to have
much affected Alcor's growth rate, in sharp contrast
to the situation at CI where there was a very sharp
increase in growth rate associated with the Internet.
Since 2001 CI's annual Membership growth has been
somewhat linear in the 60-70 range. Alcor achieved
about half the 2008 year-end Membership in 1998,
whereas the half-way mark for CI was in 2003. There
was a burst of new Members in 2005 for both Alcor (73)
and CI (100), probably associated with a New York
Times article.

   Alcor Membership and CI Membership numbers are
not directly comparable, however, insofar as Alcor
Members by definition have contracts and funding
in place for human cryopreservation. CI Membership,
by contrast, only confers the privilege of making
cryopreservation arrangements -- whether for
pet, human or tissue/DNA. Many people join CI simply
to store pets or tissue/DNA. CI statistics
distinguishing Members with executed contracts for
human cryopreservation (CI-CRYO) only date from
2006, the same year CI began having Insurance-funded
Standby and Transport from Suspended Animation, Inc.
(SA) as an option for CI Members. Below is a table of
annual Membership growth for Alcor -- and different
classes of CI Members -- since the year 2000.

  Year__Alcor_____CI

2000____41_______42

2001____39_______62

2002____44_______63

2003____50_______76

2004____52_______63

2005____73_______100__CI-CRYO_CI-SA

2006____28_______76____40______20

2007____24_______69____37______22

2008____37_______58____36______19

   CI_CRYO is a subcategory of CI and
CI-SA is the subcategory of CI-CRYO
who have made arrangements for Standby
and Transport from Suspended Animation.
As can be seen, at least half of the
new CI Members with executed contracts
for human cryopreservation (CI_CRYO)
have made arrangements with SA (CI_SA).

   Although linear annual Membership growth
for Alcor and CI is not as good as what we
would like to see, it would be naive to
imagine that the recent past is a guide
to the future. Publicity and key events of
various kinds will substantially affect
growth rate. Scientific breakthroughs
could also significantly affect annual
Membership growth.

       -- Ben Best

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