The Cof$, like any other membership/marketing organization, relies on not only making the original "sale" but on retaining the business and making future sales. The measure of success to a normal sales organization is the "Retention Rate." (RR). The RR is the percentage of people who remain on the books following the initial sale.

First, the disclaimer: I am not an expert in statistics. I took one grad school class on the subject and hated every minute. Second, we do not have accurate data from the Cof$. Third, a lot of what we do know is dated. Fourth, much of in the information on the record is anecdotal. With all of that in mind, I thought I might still be interesting to attempt a calculation of the Retention Rate for the church of $scientology.

What do we know? If we take the church at its word (please, no laughing), eight million people have been "positively" exposed to scientology; they themselves have defined this to mean, at a minimum, "purchased a book or taken a course. The most reasonable estimates I’ve seen for "active" membership indicate that there are no more than 40,000 members in the United States. I’ve not been able to find any estimates as to membership in South America, Africa, or Asia. The estimates for all of Europe suggest that, at most, there are 30,000 "active" members. The estimates I’ve seen for Australia put the number of active members at between 2,000 and 10,000. Let’s be generous and put the total number for the entire planet at 150,000 active, paying members.

We have a lot of anecdotal evidence that the current membership skews significantly to the "long term" members, that is, there are more members with 15+ years of membership that there are with less than 15 years membership. What this tells us is that of the 150k current membership, about 75k+ were members in 1985. Since we don’t know what the actual membership was in 1985, we can’t definitively state whether the membership is actually going up or down. What we can say is that in absolute numbers it appears that not more than 75,000 people have become sustaining members, or "retained" members during this time period.

By dividing 8 million by 50 years we get the average distribution of people exposed to scientology. So, 8,000,000/50 = 160,000 people. Factually, we know that the actual distribution is more like a bell shaped curve, with their most productive years occurring in 1970’s into the first half of the 1980’s. The actual raw number of contacts by year becomes very important because we have to account for turnover caused by death.

We should also keep in mind that there is also an attrition rate beyond the 15th year of membership. Unfortunately, I cannot find any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to suggest what the drop out rate is beyond the 15th year. Perhaps the Barnes, or Tory B. can give us some idea what is happening with the very long time members.

In absolute numbers, that is from 8 million exposed to 150k active current, it means they’ve lost 7,850,000 bodies in the shop. That equates to a Retention Rate of 1.875%. Now, to be fair, over the course of 50 years "X" number of scientologists have dropped their bodies and gone off to Mars, etc,. who might still be members today if they weren’t dead We do not know what the mortality rate is for scientologists. To significantly impact the RR, there would have to have been a 100% turn over in active membership due to generational shifting. There is no evidence that 150,000 active members of the Cof$ have died over the past 50 years. Beyond that, we would also need to apply the RR to deceased members to see what number would have continued beyond 15 years.

Therefore, using the most favorable membership numbers and not discounting for lose of membership beyond the 15th year, we see a RR of 1.875%+"X". If we assume that generational shifting accounts for a 10% turnover amongst current membership, that is, that the current membership would be 10% greater had members survived, X would equal 15,000 dead members, or, a total Retained Membership of 165,000.

That would give the Cof$ a 50 year Retention Rate of 2.0625%.

SP

> The Cof$, like any other membership/marketing organization, relies
> on not only making the original "sale" but on retaining the business
> and making future sales. The measure of success to a normal sales
> organization is the "Retention Rate." (RR). The RR is the
> percentage of people who remain on the books following the initial
> sale.
This is a great analysis. I'd just like to point out a couple of additional things.

[snip] > What do we know? If we take the church at its word (please, no
> laughing), eight million people have been "positively" exposed to
> scientology; they themselves have defined this to mean, at a
> minimum, "purchased a book or taken a course.
It's also worth noting that, according to www.dianetics.org and the front cover of the 1999 paperback edition of Dianetics, over 18 million copies of Dianetics have been sold. So unless the Scientology organization is taking the hard-line view that 'someone who only buys Dianetics books doesn't count as a Scientologist', this definition can't hold.

It's interesting to note that the 'over 18 million sold' claim was dropped from the front cover of the 2000 "50th anniversary" paperback edition of Dianetics. Even the "International Best-Selling Author" by L. Ron Hubbard's name was dropped (though of course his achievements are still listed prominently on the back cover, as well as in the seven-page "About the Author" section at the back of the book). It appears that every possible extraneous word was dropped from the cover, perhaps to avoid drawing attention away from the magic-motion volcano (which is _highly_ restimulative if the book is slowly rotated vertically).

In comparing the 50th anniversary edition with the 1999 edition, I also notice that the endorsement quote from Billy Sheehan ("Top rock bassist for 'Mr. Big'") has been dropped. Has he blown?

There's also another very important factor that needs to be considered when looking at Scientology's stats. As shown on http://www.whatisscientology.org/html/part11/Chp32/pg0550.html , Scientology has continually entered additional countries--from 70 in 1990, up to 129 countries in 1997. Scientology obviously considers this to be a major win, and it could be interpreted that way; but it could also be interpreted as the leading edge of a nightmare scenario.

In many countries in which Scientology operates, it has arguably reached the saturation point. The Scientology infrastructure is in place, and information on Scientology has been broadly publicized in these countries--both Scientology's own positive information on itself, and the negative information provided by critical groups. It is unrealistic by any standard to expect Scientology membership to explode; there are no vast untapped reserves of potential recruits in these countries that have not already been reached by Scientology's message. As your analysis has shown, it will likely be enough of a challenge in many of these countries to simply retain their existing numbers, by finding enough new recruits to offset the inevitable attrition.

To whatever extent that Scientology has been able to sustain its growth, it has done so at least in part by continually moving into new countries, new "fields" of recruiting that aren't nearly as "muddy" as those in which Scientology has had a long-term presence. But, while this strategy can succeed quite well in the short to middle term, it inevitably cannot produce sustainable long-term growth, simply because the supply of new fields is limited; there are only so many countries out there. And as Scientology's own statistics show, it has already expanded into the great majority of countries in the world; it is rapidly reaching--if it hasn't already reached--the point at which there simply won't be any more viable new countries to move into.

A potentially instructive example of this phenomenon is Amway.

They, too, have reached the point of saturation in many countries, and they, too, have had great problems with attrition; they, too, have managed to sustain their "stats" by expanding into new countries. And in the last few years, they have 'hit the wall'--largely exhausting the pool of viable countries to expand into. As documented by a number of sites--notably http://www.awod.com/gallery/rwav/slarsen/amway.html -- the stats have crashed thunderously since then, with double-digit negative growth rates since 1998.

-- Interested in books and stories about shapeshifting, lycanthropy, etc.?

Visit the Transformation Stories List at www.transformationlist.com For more info about me, visit www.lycanon.org SP1/KoX THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY WON'T LET MEMBERS READ THIS -> www.xenu.net PGP Fingerprint: 138E F191 42B6 5C3F D5D5 821B 430B 7306 970B BCFE Key: http://www.lycanon.org/pgpkey.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Personal Privacy 6.5.3 Comment: Visit Lycanthropes Anonymous at http://www.lycanon.org iQA/AwUBObRbkEMLcwaXC7z+EQLuhACfYpRUxFXMACjq7i+9I/61aqp2nP4AoOMb GryalBwWd+DGDZESAd7naWfD =btus -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Go Back