start a club

There are tens of millions of clubs active 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 some commonality among clubs when it comes to the best way to create and manage them. Many club ideas never get off the ground or really get off the ground because some common mistakes are made, mistakes that are made literally millions of times. While no two clubs are the same, we 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 the time commitment is always more than you think. The excitement and fun of starting 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 enterprise, 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 all clubs, leaders, organizers, and key participants need to “donate” their own spare time and effort to help the club carry out its mission. Limited time, limited resources, the overwhelming resistance of the inertia to get people to act are just some of the big reasons why clubs end up failing. Of course, clubs are often started due to high interest, so you need to take advantage of the high interest level to achieve successful action for the group.

Define the mission and purpose of the club.

Most eyes roll when they hear that they need to create a mission statement. Many have been involved in a corporate exercise in creating a mission statement where they often end up with a bunch of empty words that have no real meaning and are forgotten by everyone. Often people “feel” like they know what the mission is, but when they try to articulate it, they can’t. That’s not to say that a group can’t 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 may be to promote a political agenda, or raise environmental awareness, or just socialize and find future dates; it can be all of those things; Whatever it is, the more clearly you articulate the vision, the more you will direct your efforts toward achieving 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 nominate, elect, and remove officers. These types of processes are useful, even critical when a group escalates, otherwise anarchy ensues. However, most starting groups don’t necessarily need a mini-government in place. Many groups simply start with some lighter processes:

Officers: There is usually a president (the leader), vice president (second in command and often the leader of several major initiatives), treasurer (who manages funds), secretary (who handles meeting minutes, next steps etc). Depending on the need of your group, you can also institute a publicity 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 co-sign checks with the president. This way there is a check and balance within the group over money.

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

Meetings: A regular meeting or event usually helps to keep things going in the group and increase activity. It’s also a great way for group members to participate in events and get to know each other better and share information. If you’re hosting meetings, pay special attention to how meetings are run, which leads to the next section.

Run effective meetings

Poorly run meetings reflect badly on leaders and are a huge waste of participants’ time. While there are entire books written on how to have successful meetings, here are a couple of tips to make sure you get the most out of any meeting you host. First, define and publish an agenda. The meeting must 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 getting off track. Many groups have people wanting to voice their opinions, which leads everyone down the proverbial “rat hole.” An agenda helps you determine if that meeting is the appropriate place to address those issues or if you need to “introduce” it for another meeting. Always have a desired outcome for the meeting (for example, agree on a particular initiative, or brainstorm and come up with 3 ideas for next year’s events). You will often be surprised at how much better prepared you are for a meeting simply by thinking about what kind of decision or outcome you want from the meeting. Understand who needs to be there and what the roles of the participants are. Start the meeting on time.

Many groups have a designated secretary who keeps track of the “minutes” of the meeting: what was discussed and, in particular, the conclusions reached and items to be brought up for future discussion. This can be posted so there is a history file 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 follow-up. Often it helps to spend a few minutes planning the next meeting.

Many groups start with a kick-off meeting to talk about the club and how it will work. This should be your first meeting.

Financing and Budget

Most clubs need to spend money to run activities, print flyers, organize a conference, etc. In order to spend money, the club needs to raise money, and there are a variety of ways to finance club activities. Funding can be achieved by 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, garage 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 funds need to be in cash. Some companies, for example, may provide equipment or a venue to hold an event or practice. They may request some type of sponsorship, for example, a banner to be displayed at an event.

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

Put down 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 run group. As a result, membership and more importantly participation will begin to decline. Here are a couple of basics:

• Get an up-to-date list. It is important that you know who is in the group, how you communicate with them and what roles they play, what is their membership status, etc. There are various electronic and web tools to help you such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, etc. . .
• Get a group email list created. Communication 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 self-managed email group list will save you countless hours.
• Create a website. A website is important for sending messages not only to the group but also to the community at large. It’s a great way to let people know what’s going on (upcoming events, how to get involved, etc.), what the group has accomplished so you can strengthen ties within the group and also recruit more members. Once again, try to stay away from solutions that require a webmaster to make any changes. You may not have a webmaster in the group, and even more so, you don’t want to bottle all your activities through just one person. It was worth it? Being a part of clubs is an important part of everyday life. Forming clubs takes effort, but the rewards are clear. As an organizer, you may think it’s a thankless job, but keep in mind that people wouldn’t join or participate if they didn’t see value in it.

I hope these tips help you create the best clubs possible. In the next part, we’ll look at running clubs – a whole different ‘beast’ to run.

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