Jonathan Berry is fond of telling us that back in the day, something like 30% of all memberships lapsed within one year, not to be renewed. The available database does not record historical membership data, only current membership but we can look at some related measures: Probability of activity by year if: a) active in a given year (plotted below for the given year as 2009.07 to 2010.07 and for 2001.1-2002.1) b) if a member as of the date of the database (2010.9). The data I have does not break down the type of membership (only the expiry date - although life members could be inferred).

It seems that Jonathan's rule is likely correct and perhaps understated - although the active players graphs include all those juniors of which many probably only play in one or two tournaments. Somewhat surprisingly, something like 35% of current members are not active in the current year. In another context, there was some indication that life members are by and large not active so that could account for part of that 35% (15% or so - i.e. 20% remaining))

From an organizational perspective, this high turnover speaks to the importance of a) trying to reduce the turnover b) accommodation of the turnover through appropriate membership fee strategies for occasional and new players.