With so many plates to spin at once, deciding to actively focus on club growth can feel like an impossible task. Whether you’re a football club, gymnastics club or any other sport, club management is essential to help you achieve growth – whatever that may look like for you.
In this article, you’ll find actionable advice for growing your club that is relevant for those who’ve been in the game a while or at just starting out.
How to attract new members
Attracting new members is a key part of club management. It’s easy to get into the habit of relying on word of mouth to keep new members coming in, but there’s so much more you can do to help get them through the door.
Assess the scene
Before you start, you need to know what type of people you want to bring to the club. Being specific will help create messaging that your target member will engage with.
Look at what you’re currently offering, what’s popular and what’s not? What about events which are well attended?
You might notice that you have lots of one age group or a type of training is particularly popular. You can then use this information to build up a picture of e of your ideal target audience.
You also need to assess what the new member experience is like now. What happens after their first point of contact?
By creating a positive experience right off the bat, you’re priming every member to stay with you for as long as possible. You can create positive experiences from things like a user-friendly website, easy to fill out forms (online is better) and welcome emails.
Tip: You can use LoveAdmin to understand what your members want. Take advantage of customisable forms to capture information like if a member might prefer a certain type of coaching or need more support. Capacity filters in the timetable can tell you what sessions are popular, giving you the information you need to understand your members’ preferences.
Get communicating
Now that you know what type of audience you want to reach, you can tailor your approach to attract those people.
How about developing partnerships with your local schools and nurseries? You can then give them flyers and posters to put up. You could even do a taster session during PE. After all, if their child comes home talking about your activity, they’re more likely to sign up.
Tip: Set up automatic emails in our system about everything from payments, promoting your club and events. Emails can be customised with your branding and images, gifs, links and videos to make sure emails are as engaging as possible. Worried about constantly having to create new emails? With LoveAdmin you can set up templates anytime, from anywhere in the system, making communicating with prospects and members easier than ever.
Creating an online presence will help with keeping control of your club image. It’s also a great way to generate community around your organisation. The key to success is being realistic about what you can achieve. For example, there’s no point signing up to every social media channel if you only have time to manage one well.
Ask yourself:
- How many new members do you need to grow, or just to remain stable?
- Do you know why people join you and not your competitors?
- What does your club offer to match your members’ needs?
How to attract staff / volunteers
We know there’s a shortage of coaches and volunteers, so recruitment is difficult. Fortunately, there are ways you can combat this.
The most important thing to think about is how you can remove as many of the barriers to entry as possible.
For example, some football club parents want to start coaching or refereeing but can’t afford the cost of training. If you offer to subsidise or even pay for their training and qualifications, you’re removing that hurdle.
Another way you can remove barriers is by recruiting from your pool of parents and students. For example, Baskerville School of Gymnastics offers their members an extensive coach education programme, that can lead to a long-term career and some great life experience. The coaching pathway starts from 10 years old, and the school also offers apprenticeships, work-experience and P.E. teacher training across their 5 locations.
You can also add a field to your registration forms that asks if parents would ever be interested in volunteering and what skills or special interests they have. That way when you need to find new volunteers you have a list to choose from.
Tip: LoveAdmin forms are completely customisable so you can add fields that ask prospective members what their skills are and if they’d ever consider volunteering. You then have a list of potential volunteers ready to go when you need new ones.
Do you have a college or university close by? Why not get a stall at a freshers fair or open day event and promote becoming a coach, volunteer or another form of staff member?
Colin Fyfield from Aldershot Boys & Girls Football Club says, “We linked up with a local sports college, as they often have students completing their Level 1 and 2 qualifications and need placements. They can shadow our coaches and get the experience they need. Our hope is that they will then join the club and take on coaching their own teams. This works both ways, as we hope it will inspire some of our older players to join the college and follow the same path”.
Ask yourself:
- What key attributes would you like your staff/volunteers to have?
- How do you recruit staff/volunteers? Could this process be improved? Do you tap into your associated workforce effectively, such as parents or family members?
- Do you provide training and development opportunities if people want them? How do you identify growth potential amongst your staff/volunteers?
How to put in place strategies for long term growth
It’s all very well and good bringing in new members but if that’s all you focus on, you’re not future proofing your club for long-term success.
Create goals and track your progress
To start with, it’s a good idea to get an idea of where your club is currently at. For example, how many members do you have?
That way, you can develop data driven goals (the next step) and track your progress.
What you choose as your goal is up to you but try to choose something that can be measured. For example, ‘I want to grow my club’ you can track this by recording how many members you have. You could also pick a goal like ‘I want to grow my club revenue’ then track payments, outgoings, etc.
Tip: You can use the over 17 reports available on LoveAdmin to track your progress in detail. You can also see how you’re currently doing on your dashboard, including how many members, volunteers and coaches you have.
Diversify your revenue
As we’ve already said, you cannot thrive on new members alone. Fortunately, there’s a lot you can offer to make sure it’s not your only revenue source. For example, if you’re a football club, do you have a clubhouse? Could you rent it out for events and weddings?
Could you expand your offering, for example aerobics or parkour?
Do you offer holiday camps or birthday parties? They can also be a great way to bring in new revenue.
Tip: LoveAdmin can help with all your event and activity needs. Set up an activity calendar that makes booking easy and quick. Customise with your personal branding and add links to specific events on social and email. Use can also use the shop feature to sell merch, kit and more.
It may be worth asking your members what they would be interested in. This is because they are a sample of the people you’re trying to appeal to, parents.
By diversifying your revenue, you’re also showing potential members and customers that you have something unique that other clubs don’t have.
Stop cash drain
A certain amount of cash drain is inevitable. However, if it gets to out of control, it doesn’t matter how diverse your revenue is or how many members you have, you’re going to go under.
There’s a simple fix for this which starts with plugging any holes that you notice when reviewing your club. A common drain that people struggle with is collecting payments. This most commonly happens in two ways, not being able to keep track of payments and trouble chasing late payments.
Tip: Doing everything manually may lead to human error. With LoveAdmin you can set up smart notifications that automatically take payments and chase when needed. Set up reports to make sure your payments are running smoothly. This leads to less time billing and more time to spend growing your club.
Keep members engaged
The more members you retain, the easier it will be to grow.
Another reason that diversifying your revenue can be useful is it helps to keep members constantly looking forward to the next thing. Why not try a family day or an event where members add their mark to your building/clubhouse etc. Activities like this will also make them feel rewarded and recognised for the support they give.
You could try competitions or tournaments. With some exciting marketing on social media and email, you can make this an event to remember. Plus, everyone loves a trophy, so your members are likely to get excited.
The last idea you can try is offers to celebrate special events. Is it a members’ one year anniversary? Why not give them 10% off their renewal?
Tip: You can set up one off or long running offers using LoveAdmin that are only seen by all or specific members. Do you need to promote an event? We’ve got SMS and email features for just that. Shop and timetable options make running events and competitions easy and effective. In-depth reporting also helps you understand which events or competitions were successful.
Ask yourself
- What can your club do that no others can?
- What are your goals for the future?
- Are there any areas of the club that are draining cash?
Curious about how LoveAdmin can help your club? Get started today.
