|
Bowls Blitz
(What is your Club doing on recruitment?)
By
Denis Goodley
We hear a great deal about Bowls Clubs losing members and they ask, quite rightly, what the various National Governing Bodies are doing about it?
The EBA had a campaign last year to assist Clubs and the EIBA also asked Clubs to share their successful recruitment schemes with others and no doubt some Clubs took advantage of these initiatives.
The main way forward I think is for all Clubs is to work hard, really hard, at recruitment at local level. In the old days Clubs had waiting lists and times were easy. No effort was needed to fill the rinks, but the world has changed dramatically, not I am sure in the way we would wish, but we have to face up to reality. Club Committees and their individual members now have to work a great deal harder to recruit new members. I do not believe that the NGBs can do much to help at grassroots level; perhaps provide the odd piece of propaganda and advertising materials. The sharing of best practise does not seem to have got through to Clubs and I suspect that some prefer to keep their success to themselves rather than share with their neighbours. Perhaps too many are chasing too few or even chasing the same ‘estate/region/area’ for new members.
For those interested I am happy to share what I consider to be a success story on recruitment and possibly even more importantly the retention of Club members. Acle IBC was formed in 1993, a six rink bowls club in the centre of a village (population 2,500) in Norfolk, with 5 other indoor bowls clubs within a half hour drive. Not a sensible planning decision you may well have thought. However the Bowls Committee succeeded in forming one of the strongest clubs in the country. How you may well ask, the answer is by hard work, constantly thinking of ways of improving the Club and its facilities, always having coaches available for beginners, having duty stewards on duty 12 hours per day, everyday.
Membership at one point was720 but over the last 5 years it has settled to a comfortable 620 and we have knocked the current trend by increasing membership each year for the past 3 years, not by many admittedly, but enough to stop the rot. We loose 50/60 members per year but manage to replace the same number. All those that do not renew their membership receive a phone call from the Manager to ask why they have not renewed, just in case there is a problem within the club that he is not aware of. The reasons given for not renewing are mainly, age related illnesses or moving from the area or that the sport was not as easy as they thought. Not once have we had a disgruntled member who said he did not like the club or its members, a situation we are all very proud of.
As stated before, we always have a volunteer duty steward, to greet and assist any new members, collect rink fees, answer the phone and keep the premises clean and tidy. In my past life as a Charter Mark Assessor I would have to assess the accessibility, customer care initiatives of Public Companies and I wonder how many Bowls Clubs subjected to this scrutiny would be awarded the coveted Charter Mark. Just how keen are some Clubs in welcoming new people onto their premises?
New members are so important. How do we recruit them? Well we have a notice constantly on village notice boards welcoming new members to the club, offering friendship and a warm welcome to all. We have 2 rinks left free every Saturday morning with 2 coaches standing by for anyone wishing to pop in and have a go. This system is by far our most successful method of recruitment and justifies my stubbornness in not allowing these rinks to be used for casual play even on a slack weekend. In fact regular casual play groups on Sat mornings have agreed to rotate 4 from 5 to keep these rinks free, because as they say, ‘this is how so many of us came to join the club’. All ages are encouraged to just turn up but any youngsters are then encouraged to attend for the junior coaching sessions which take place every Friday afternoon from 4-30pm. We have always encouraged youngsters at the Club and we are usually featured in the final stages of the National Club U25s Competition, appearing 3 times in the Final.
One experiment we did try involving youngsters that did backfire on us, was allowing children to come into the Club after school or during holidays, to buy drinks/refreshments and sit and enjoy them in the club. Financially a great success, but unfortunately the “yobs” spoilt it for others and we had to throw them out. I did hope to encourage them to watch and perhaps with a little persuasion have ago, some did, but we did not have one recruit from this experiment that unfortunately did upset for a time some of our regulars.
What are we doing at present to encourage youngsters? The plan is not to allow any child in the education system surrounding our club to pass through the system without having a chance to have a go at bowls. We have links with all 6 local primary Schools and we have now, (which has taken 10years to do so), gained access to the local High School. Who says persistence doesn’t pay off, but in this case a change of PE teacher helped tremendously.
We applied for a grant from ‘Awards for All’ for grant for the supply of short mat equipment to the High School and Carpet Bowls to the juniors, but after 3 attempts and even agreeing to change our Constitution (nanny state interference), we were refused. Strange how a good scheme like this is turned down and other less savoury efforts are allowed, but that’s another story. We then encouraged a local Primary School to apply and they were successful so, mats, bowls etc., will soon be delivered to them and they will share these with the other schools. Never say die.
We also have our members, who belong to surrounding outdoor clubs, now coaching schoolchildren. 20 attend at one village primary school, 30 attend from a local high school at another village club. Acle provided the facilities and training of these Instructors, free of charge. From these 50 children we would hope to recruit 5 or more for our own junior section, a realistic target but hopefully we may do better.
Our junior section competes in the Anglian Junior League, which is a stepping-stone to our more competitive domestic leagues. One domestic league, which has been particularly successful in recruiting youngsters and new members, is the ’village league’, which is played on Saturday evenings under Federation rules with 3 rinks per team involved. A great family night out. For those not familiar with Norfolk, nearly every village has, or has had, a bowling green and so bowls was a part of life in the villages.
One other important aspect of recruitment is the fact that we have a regular column in the local weekly paper. This resulted in an excellent sponsorship deal as the Sales Director of the Company concerned (not a bowler) regularly read our articles and was more than happy to be associated with a Club who advertised their Club so well. Scarborough Indoor Bowls Club, which I have never visited, is an example to us all on advertising, well done to you all; I rarely read a bowls magazine without some article appearing from Scarborough. When was the last time your club was featured?
Back to good old Norfolk. What else do we do? Well, we must never forget retaining our own members is just as important as recruitment. The Committee every year look for improvements to the Club, whether it be simple things like extra access bars to the green, new scoreboards, totaliser, new chairs and. tables, security systems etc., All these small improvements are appreciated by our members. We have also undertaken a number of surveys to allow those who do not attend the AGM or are too quiet to make their views known, an opportunity to have a say on the running of their Club. Whether it is on the attitude of management, meal quality, type of leagues, anything they would like to share with us. In addition to these we have individual surveys regarding meals at County matches, rule changes to particular leagues etc.
One more suggestion to other Clubs is to engage in all local events whether it is fetes, street fairs or whatever. We provide prizes for example to local school events, but they are’ bowls specific’ rather than a bottle of scotch. We give ‘6 week free coaching certificates’ as prizes. The local ‘ bobby’ won one recently and brought all his family down to the Club to have a go. They were all better than him and two of them joined.
The Club supports all Local Authority sports initiatives such as ‘Sport for All’ or’ Leisure Permits’ and the latest ‘Sports for Less’ scheme, where we offer free coaching and use of equipment. Our club therefore is featured in all their literature, which goes out to libraries etc. New ideas we will be trying are,’ corporate days’ where we will invite, initially, our six local business sponsors to come and compete in a triples event and join us in a buffet presentation afterwards.
We sadly lost our lady Secretary recently and rather than a Trophy in her name to remember her, we have launched the ‘Ros Buck Bursary’ which will be cash or equivalent prizes to help our youngster’s progress. Ros was always the first person the younger players went to for encouragement and advice and this will be an appropriate way of remembering her tremendous work for the Club. Our youngsters will be provided with tickets to the World Bowls events, provided with top class coaching and financial assistance.
Another area we become involved in within the community is when we host our two coffee mornings, one at the beginning of the season for the Mac Millan Nurses for their ‘biggest coffee morning’ event and one at the end of the season for a different local charity. We have raised over £34,000 since we started for over 20 different local organisations and we invite them along to our Club to receive the cheques, another opportunity to encourage people to have a look over the centre and perhaps visit again with their families.
Of course it also helps if you are successful on the green as well and we have collected 28 county titles and reached the final stages of all of the national club events, such as Denny, Egham, Vivienne etc. We are always able to provide a coach load of supporters to cheer and support our teams.
I do hope these ideas will encourage Clubs to go out there and start recruiting with vigour and do not be put of by the usual ‘knockers’; these types never do anything anyway. Go forth and advertise, promote at every opportunity, use the press, local radio and TV (they are always looking for input), village noticeboards, village newsletters, mailshots around an estate, target newcomers to the village. Do not allow anyone the excuse not to know where and how to join your Club and the Club must become involved in all aspects of the local community. Offer the use of the Club facilities to other organisations; we have the Norfolk WI annual bowls tournament at Acle and the Young Wives Clubs, (very popular with the coaches).
Good luck to you all in your recruitment campaign and if I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate to contact me at my Club 01493 750008 or via the EIBA headquarters.
Denis Goodley
Secretary Acle Indoor Bowls Club
EIBA Executive Member
|