Pool rules

U.S. Masters Swimming, a Sarasota-based nonprofit dedicated to encouraging adults to swim, has made the kinds of long growth strides in recent years any organization would covet.

Among the accomplishments: The membership rolls, people who pay from $39 a year, depending on state fees, are up 60% in the last decade, from 40,000 to 64,000. And the operating budget has more than doubled since 2007, from $1.1 million to nearly $3 million last year. The group long outgrew its space, in the historic Pagoda Building in downtown Sarasota, and plans to move into new offices, at least double the size, in early 2016.

The success, says Executive Director Rob Butcher, comes from two counterintuitive approaches to building a reservoir of support. One, the organization doesn't apply pressure on members to compete in events, like most other sports organizations do. Second, and the factor Butcher says has keyed the membership surge, is the group approaches its brand the old-fashioned way, where in-person handshakes take priority over viral videos.