The lifeblood of any sports club is their membership. In the modern day there are a huge number of leisure opportunities available to our prospective members. In many ways we have to be far more proactive in recruiting members, players and volunteers to our clubs than we have been in the past. Not only do we have to actively go out and recruit new members, we also have to make sure that we retain our current membership. Recognising and rewarding the efforts made by the volunteers, committee members and players who put in the hard work throughout the year to keep the clubs afloat is essential if you want to retain these individuals if you want to grow your club.

            This series of articles will be based on “The Four R’s”, Recruitment, Retention, Recognition and Reward. In each of the following four articles we will look at a range of ideas, which can be implemented, to help you club attract and retain members.

            The first of “The Four R’s” is Recruitment.

Every club has it’s own ways in which it recruits new members. You can tailor this process depending on the type of members you are trying to recruit. Social members will have a totally different set of priorities when looking at a potential club to join than potential players. Although you may find that once members many of your players will be “very active” in the social department!!!!

The following is a list of different recruitment techniques that you may or may not already implement at your club. If you already use all of these techniques then great, well done, let me know if you have any other ideas you would like to see added top the list. However I hope that this list will include new ideas, which will be useful to you all.

·        Word of mouth:

·        Adverts in the local press.

·        Creating a Website encouraging prospective new members to get in touch.

·        Creating good links with your local sports council.

·        Forging links with local schools, colleges and universities.

·        Liasing with your local sports development officer regularly and effectively.

·        Creating posters and leaflets and posting them in places where you think your prospective members may spend time, like: the gym, sports centers, local pubs, shops, community notice boards, really anywhere that you can get a poster up and increase the profile of the club.

·        Regular articles should be submitted to the local media.

·        Organise a bring a friend day, where every member of the club brings a friend to either try the game or try the social side. Combine this with a BBQ or some other function.

·        Maximise any publicity that your club gets, work hard to raise your profile .

·        Get Business cards made up with the clubs details. Give each member a few that they can hand out when they are talking to people who may express an interest.

·        Welcome / Info packs.

·        Set up a recruitment sub-committee.

Many of these ideas seem like common sense and your club will probably do some if not all of these already. However I cannot emphasise enough how important it is for your club to raise it’s profile and market itself appropriately at every given opportunity. You will be surprised at how few people in your local community will know that your club exists, never mind who and where you are.

            Always try to make sure that a club phone number and the clubs website address are on all adverts, posters leaflets etc. Make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch with the club and make sure that initial enquiries are dealt with quickly and professionally.

            A nice touch is to create a welcome pack / information pack that you can send out to people who express an interest in your club. This should contain a brief history of the club, a membership application form, a letter form the committee, details of the facilities and any other relevant material that you think a prospective member would like to see.

All in all, you need every member of your club to be actively recruiting whenever the chance arises and getting as many people as possible to come down and get involved. All of these activities should be co-ordinated and monitored by your Club Committee or your Recruitment Sub-Committee.