While I certainly put in a lot of work on Lee I was only part of a team. Other people started the Lee Flying Association and raised the funding for the legal challenge.
How do you grow AOPA UK into an organisation anything like AOPA USA??
You can't, we don't have enough potential members in the UK to fund the same level of staff and marketing that they do in the US. We have a paid CEO (Martin) and a part time admin person. Everyone else is an unpaid volunteer.
The ethic in the US is also different to UK, I can say that because I'm living there at the moment. In the US there is more willingness by individuals to fund activities on a voluntary basis, where in UK there's a tendency for it to be done on a commercial or local government basis. For example if the local residents in the US want a swimming hole or some beach facilities they'll band together to do the work and raise the funding. In the UK we'd probably lobby the local council to do it or the facility would be provided by a commercial concern. This isn't a criticism, it's just pointing up a difference in attitude.
You need to go back to the inter-war years to find local government funding airports in the UK. It's still happening in the US although pressure for user fees is now rising.