Start a club

There are tens of millions of active clubs in the United States alone. There are as many types of clubs as there are mutual interests between people. There are clubs for socialization, promotion, awareness, school activities, volunteering, information exchange, sports, professional development, religion, culture, finance, etc. While the variety of clubs is almost endless, there is something in common among clubs in terms of how best to create and manage them. Many club ideas never really get started or never really take off because some common mistakes are made, mistakes that are made literally millions of times. While no two clubs are the same, we’ve rounded up many of the best tips and tricks for starting a club in this post, so you can learn from the backs of others to build your own successful club.

Realize that time commitment is always more than you think. The excitement and fun of the idea of ​​founding a club is always closely followed by the reality of the effort it will take to make it successful. Just like in business or any other company, a great idea works as long as it can be executed well. Who wants to create a failed club, no matter how good the idea is? In almost every club, key leaders, organizers, and participants must “donate” their own free time and effort for the club to carry out its mission. Limited time, limited resources, overwhelming inertia of getting people to act are just a few of the big reasons clubs end up failing. Of course, clubs are often started out of high interest, so leveraging the strong level of interest is necessary for the group to perform successfully.

Define the mission and objective of the club.

Most eyes roll when they hear that they need to create a mission statement. Many have participated in a corporate exercise to create a mission statement in which they often end up with a bunch of empty words that have no real meaning and that everyone forgets. People often “feel” that they know what the mission is, but when they try to articulate it, they can’t. That is not to say that a group cannot be successful without a mission statement; however, by setting goals, you can help clarify in your mind what the long-term goal is and help communicate it to others. Your mission can be to promote a political agenda or raise environmental awareness, or it can just be to socialize and find future dates, it can be all of those things, whatever it is, the more clearly the vision is articulated, the more you direct your efforts to achieve that. vision.

Create the structure you need

Some groups are so well organized that they institute officers, create a constitution, even create processes to amend the constitution and appoint, elect, and remove officers. These types of processes are useful, even critical when a group scales; otherwise, anarchy ensues. However, most starting groups do not necessarily need a mini-government. Many groups just start with some lighter processes:

Officers: There is usually a president (the leader), a vice president (second in command and often a leader of several major initiatives), a treasurer (who handles funds), a secretary (who takes care of meeting minutes , next steps, etc.). Depending on the needs of your group, you can also institute an advertising officer, webmaster, historian, etc. It is also very useful to define the roles, especially who has the right to decide what. For example, some groups will require the treasurer to sign checks with the president. In this way there is a control and balance within the group over money.

If you are serious enough, you may consider joining as a non-profit organization often. Incorporation has many benefits, such as limiting members’ liability for debts and liabilities. Onboarding also provides higher levels of “tenure” and can help you with financing.

Meetings – Usually a regular meeting or event helps keep things going in the group and increases activity. It’s also a great way for group members to help participate in events, get to know each other better, and share information. If you are holding meetings, pay particular attention to how the meetings are conducted, which leads to the next section.

Conduct effective meetings

Poorly organized meetings reflect poorly on leaders and are a huge waste of time for participants. While comprehensive books have been written on how to have successful meetings, here are a couple of tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of any meeting you host. First, define and publish an agenda. The meeting should have a purpose and participants may need to prepare in advance. Very few meetings require a surprise to be effective. An agenda also helps keep you from drifting off course. Many groups have people who want to express their opinions, leading everyone down the proverbial “mousetrap hole.” An agenda helps you enforce whether that meeting is the appropriate place to address those issues or if you need to “take” her to another meeting. Always have a desired outcome for the meeting (for example, come to an agreement on a particular initiative, or brainstorm and come up with 3 ideas for next year’s events). You will often be surprised how best you are prepared for a meeting simply by thinking about what kind of decision or outcome you want from the meeting. Understand who should be present and what the roles of the participants are. Start the meeting on time.

Many groups have a designated secretary who is following the “minutes” of the meeting, what was discussed and, in particular, the conclusions that were made and the items that will be presented for future discussion. This can be posted so that there is a historical archive so members can always go back and track what happened.

When the meeting is over, be sure to capture what the “action items” are. What is the next step: who does what, when and who is responsible for monitoring. Often times, it helps to take a few minutes to plan the next meeting.

Many groups start with an initial meeting to discuss the club and how it will work. This should be your first meeting.

Financing and Budget

Most clubs need to spend money for activities, printing brochures, organizing a conference, etc. To spend money, the club needs to raise money, and there are a variety of ways to fund club activities. Funding can be obtained from the members themselves through membership fees, activity fees, donations. Funding can also be obtained through a variety of fundraising activities such as a bake sale, yard sale, car wash.

Many corporations and government institutions also fund and sponsor groups. Grant applications can be completed to see if you qualify for this type of funding. Not all financing must be in cash. Some companies, for example, may provide equipment or a venue for an event or practice. They may request some kind of sponsorship, for example a banner displayed at an event.

Additionally, you may want to connect with national, state, and regional chapters of similar interest groups. They can be a good source of funding on their own or provide you with valuable information on how to improve the effectiveness of your club.

Lower the nuts and bolts

Each club has a basic set of operations that help it operate more efficiently. There is nothing more frustrating for leaders and members than being in a poorly managed group. As a result, membership and, more importantly, participation will start to wane. Here are a couple of the basics:

• Get an updated list. It is important that you know who are in the group, how you reach them and what roles they play, what their membership status is, etc. There are various electronic and web tools to help you, such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, etc. .
• Get a group of email lists created. Communicating with the group is important and doing it easily without having to write 50 emails each time will save you a lot of time. Getting a list of self-managed email groups will save you countless hours.
• Create a website. A website is important to send messages not only to the group, but also to the community in general. It is a great way for people to know what is happening (future events, how to participate, etc.), what are the achievements of the group so that you can strengthen ties within the group and also to recruit more members. Again, try to steer clear of solutions that require a webmaster to make any changes. You may not have a webmaster in the group and more, you don’t want to block all your activities through one person. It was worth it? Being part of clubs is an important part of everyday life. Forming clubs takes effort, but the payoff is clear. As an organizer, you might think it’s a thankless job, but keep in mind that people wouldn’t join in and participate if they didn’t see value in it.

I hope these tips help you create the best possible clubs. In the next part, we will examine how to manage clubs – a completely different “beast” to manage.

There are many other best practices out there. If you have ideas and suggestions on how to found clubs, please post your comments; we would love to hear from you and help make yourself available to all the other club organizers who are taking the time to follow their passions.