I think it has been said, but if the culture of the club is an XC culture, then you will fledge more pilots. I fly with the Greater Boston Soaring Club. We are a large club, and have many regular XC pilots. When I started to fly with GBSC I joined the board, and made a few policy suggestions that would promote XC in the club. A fellow board member commented, "Promote XC, don't we discourage XC". And I think he was right, our policy's made it difficult, at the time I think I was the only cross country pilot on the board. Even with that headwind, we have made significant improvements in policy, and training. We have far to go, but the trailer trash end of the field is getting larger all the time.

Things we have done that helped.

Set up a XC mentor "dating service". If you are new, don't know the folks that are rigging their own gliders, I would match up a member that expressed interest in learning XC and matched them up with an experienced pilot. They could ask questions, perhaps get some encouragement etc.

We have 3 encampments each year, 2 "somewhat" focused on badge flying. One at Mifflin, and one at Mt Washington. A place like Mifflin where the off field options are so good, can ease the fear of leaving the nest.

We have put on a winter (or early spring) XC ground school. We put on a two evening presentation. The usual stuff, thermaling, fly to the next airport, call it home, repeat. Roy Bourgeois has a great off field landing review, with shots from the air, and on the ground for field selection.

I have done some lead follow, I now have a piece of a duo, and expect to do some dual.

Things I want to do:

Not all of our instructors are XC pilots, this is fine, but the elemental skills for XC can be taught locally, and I hope to put together a series of lessons, thermaling, gliding, a very local 25k triangle for confidence building, and an intentional land out at a nearby airport. I agree with Hank, that the fear of land outs is very high. In power flying, you end up at other airports all the time, but if you have learned to fly at our club, new pilots only fly from our local field. Landing "out", even at an airport is scary.

But the club culture is at the heart of this. If the club encourages advancement of your flying skills at least to silver, then that is a good place to decide if farther is for you. For some it is not, for others, they may move to competition, or records. But the bottom line, we have seen far more conversion to private ownership, and XC than we had in the past. You need to keep helping those along, not all will want to go, but those that do, tend to stick with it...