Overall, I think the BGA needs more student clubs, more coordinated schools activity, and a review of its overall structure.
Superficially this seems unobjectionable (and I also agree that the AGA rules bit is a red herring), but it may be worth challenging it in the hope of deeper insights.
I have no convincing answers for go, but I observe that other organised leisure activities use different models. I mention two below. These may work in some way for go.
1. I have a friend who teaches taiji (t'ai-chi). It seems that the standard model for martial arts is that a teacher offers class tuition. He rents the room and charges students. He keeps any profit as a way of earning his living, and he may also make something from offering equipment or books for sale. Because this model is often seen as educational, it is apparently fairly common to get rooms for nothing or at a discount from local councils or education authorities, or even companies. In the case of taiji, at least, it is possible to point to side benefits (relaxation, improved health, etc) and this makes it fairly easy (at least when the economy is running smoothly) also to interest companies, schools and other organisations in running e.g. lunchtime introductory courses for a fee.
The teacher's class is
not a club, but from the pupils' point of view it offers much the same benefits (there are weekend outings, even group trips to China, and attendance at tournaments). An extra benefit is that the teacher does all the organisational work.
The teacher does not have to belong to a higher organisation, but there is one. However, it is small and has very few functions. Again, limiting myself to what I know about the taiji case, these functions include optional certification, advice and discounts on insurance, and serving as a convenient contact point with China.
It seems to me this model could serve for budding go professionals or teachers, though perhaps only as a full-time job in major cities (I believe taiji supports several full-time teachers in London and a couple in Birmingham, our "second city").
I think the key here is stressing the side benefits of taiji, but that can better be discussed under the second model.
2. The second model is aimed mainly at parents and opinion formers (including the press). There are certain activities which are widely, even if sometimes falsely, seen as beneficial to children or people who want to improve themselves. Taiji is one example, but music lessons and several activities that crop up regularly in local adult education courses fit the bill. Even trivia such as sudoku are sold as brain improvers in the media.
Go can quite easily, although perhaps with tongue in cheek occasionally, be sold as useful in enhancing calculating ability, decision making, long-term planning, concentration, awareness of other cultures, and health (e.g. delaying mental degradation). If these sorts of pitches are made to parents, company training sections, people who run old people's homes, etc., a BGA-type organisation would be needed to attend to the resulting enquiries. We have one, and that's a good start, but the information we offer is currently of the wrong sort, so changes of attitude and structure would still be needed.
For this model to work, the focus of BGA activity would in fact need to change drastically, to parents and opinion formers and
away from students and children (who may, nevertheless, be the main beneficiaries). It would, however, be the parents and so on who take the lead in organising, or at least demanding, local activities. They may choose not to do this in club form, but by hiring teachers.
ConclusionsLooking at these two possible models - there must be more and they can each be refined - I come to three conclusions as to what may be at fault under the present system.
1. The club model rather than the class model may be out of date now, or just not suitable any more.
2. Publicity about the game's activity is currently totally misguided (this is an old bee in my bonnet). Year after year I hear the old refrain that the BGA/AGA/whatever must contact the local press and offer them two things: (a) announcements about tournaments, and (b) a column devoted to tsume-go problems. Utter codswallop. I speak as a journalist. Two main things are wrong with this approach: no editor of any merit is going to be interested, and they are too local. What is needed are major articles that tell people in general, not just likely games nerds, what benefits are to be had from the game. Even the few articles that have made it to the national press so far mostly tend just to sell go as an interesting game for nerds. It should rather be sold as a game that expands your brain, that makes you live longer, that makes you a better manager, that staves off Alzheimer's, etc. Articles like that not only attract national papers (usually for the health pages or the like) but are syndicated, and because they are general and not news related, they can be recycled easily. (And as a minor plus, you get paid well for them, so it should be budding teachers who either write them or who brief journalists.)
3. This item derives from the last. If a valid market to aim at is indeed parents, opinion formers and the like, it is equally misguided to stress, as the BGA currently does, that go is a very easy game to learn. There have been repeated efforts by some BGA officials to eliminate any hint that go is "challenging" - the c-word in British go. But if you want to convince people that go is worth taking up and, more to the point, getting involved in, it has to be seen as a worthy challenge.
In fact, although the above is mainly brain-storming and does not necessarily represent my own views in every way, I am strongly tempted to believe that the recent slump in BGA membership may be connected with the dumbing down of go in this country.
One thing I wonder about is, would it be better if membership was compulsory to play in a tournament? A sliding scale of membership could be introduced, you have to pay for rating, then for standard membership, then perhaps an even more advanced level? 
