Anyone ever started a local club?

[allabout]

I've been really into my reef tank lately and a few months ago went to a local club meeting. Unfortunately when I got there it was just me and the founder of the club. But I committed to helping him get this club going and our last meeting we had 5 people. Seems small I know but we're starting from nothing. We're in a pretty rural area but between the two nearest counties and the cities within them there's 150k + people so we figure there has to be a fairly good number of people into keeping aquariums.

He's been trying to get this going for a year now, I've been involved for less than 3 months. But I've built a small website for us to use to try to look more professional and help people get information on our club. He also brought flyers to all of the local pet stores (we only have big box stores and some very small local stores, no really nice stores). I've put a post on craigslist and will do that again. But does anyone have experience starting a club? Any other ideas for getting the word out cheaply? We'd love to build a nice local club and although it will not likely ever get to the size of some of the big clubs centered around metro areas if we could get even 20 - 30 people who regularly met that would be awesome.

So any ideas?? Thanks!

 

[AZDesertRat]

With all the free info on the internet today, clubs just don't work. I was 3 time President of a club that had been very active for over 20 years but about 5 years ago when all the reef forums really started becoming attractive and informational the club fell apart. It also didn't help when all the members started buying online and not supporting the LFS that supported the club.
I have been a part of two other startups since then and neither succeeded.
Today we have a very informal group that meets every other month to trade and auction corals with no strings attached and it seems to work well.

 

[KJAG]

Agree-the local club is dead. C-list is a good connect to local reefers though for me at least.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I am not so sure about the point of view that the club is dead. Have you guys seen all of the successful clubs that are in the US right now?

Even if it is small a club can be fun and very useful. Go for it.

 

[_sludgefactory]

Yea there's several major clubs in pa. Lake Erie Advanced Reefers, Pittsburgh Marine Aquarium Society, there's another in South central pa that i can't remember the name of.

 

[allabout]

It would be a bummer if the local club is truly dead. Although as hard as it has been to get it started it wouldn't be shocking. The problem here is there is not a really good live fish store locally to bring people together. I'm just hoping we can get a few people locally that get together, talk, check out each others tanks and maybe do some trading at some point. We'll see, I'll just keep grinding at it I guess. Thanks!

 

[ca2or]

let me start by saying I love R2R...if for no other reason than it is highly unlikely that this site will share the same fate as other forums or clubs.

For example I recently visited a club I was a part of before and the life, excitement, and overall club feeling is long gone.....it is more of a local classified now. Sad to see.....doesn't make me want to go back.

 

[cdness]

Well I am in the process of doing what you are looking at doing. We have a local club that has basically died out. The founder and I have been chatting and getting people more involved and we are getting more and more people involved on the site and at the meetings. I am actually hosting a mini-swap at my house this month and we are discussing the plans of hosting a community wide frag swap and marine expo in the fall of 2013.

While I love the information that is available, there is nothing like having someone come over to share their knowledge first hand. You end up getting to know people rather than just usernames on the web. It is a much better feeling and lots of fun to get together as a group and chat about reef stuff and maybe even give a demonstration of a new product or how to DIY some stuff. Through the club we have access to a PAR meter, hanna checkers, inland band saw, and enough equipment to set up at least two tanks as spares that people can share if they run into issues.

In order to bring in new members we are using a wide array of membership drive techniques:

1. Fliers - hanging them around town to catch new people who may not know the club exists
2. Business cards to hand out when chatting about the club
3. Vehicle stickers - We have a member who works at a vinyl sign place who was able to get stickers donated for a small advertising
4. Word of mouth - this is the most important as you are chatting with other reefers at the LFS or other places. Just chatting with someone can get them to look into it more and become active
5. Membership drive contest - I am offering up a frag pack to new members who are active. Also there is a prize TBD for those who do the referring to get the current members to actively try find new members.

Our local club is now a member of MASNA and we are working on our sponsorship with Reefkeeping Magazine as well. In two months we have grown quickly and I see the future is brighter for our club.

Just as a bonus for you, we have a neighbor club up in Bemidji, MN who just got done hosting their frag swap. They are a great group and have been massively successful as a club. I am hoping RRVR will get the support they have one of these days. If it can be done in North-Central MN you should have no problem.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Also if your club needs a forum let me know and I can add one for free.

 

[allabout]

Thanks revhtree I'll keep that in mind if we get more than 2 people haha!

Thats great cdness, good to see someone else is trying to get people together! Nice to hear that not all the clubs are in huge metro areas. We'll see how it goes. I'm gonna use some of your ideas for sure, I'll look into MASNA. The club is for fresh and saltwater but of course I lean toward the marine side . I like the idea of business cards though, there are times when you talk to someone in a store or something and it would be easy to hand them a card rather than finding something to write on or hoping they remember. I'll have to look for some inexpensive ones. We had a pretty cool logo made up for the website so I think it would be nice on a card. Thanks for the ideas. Good luck with your club too!

 

[illcssd]

let me start by saying I love R2R...if for no other reason than it is highly unlikely that this site will share the same fate as other forums or clubs.

For example I recently visited a club I was a part of before and the life, excitement, and overall club feeling is long gone.....it is more of a local classified now. Sad to see.....doesn't make me want to go back.

I was also a part of said club before. Sad how it has gone away. I feel like it really takes a strong leader with a good drive to keep the club successful, and growing. If you don't have that, it will flounder and die.

 

[cdness]

Just for an example here is the flier I made up. We are still in the process of approving the design to go with but it's just one of the ideas:

You hit the nail on the head with the idea behind the business cards. You can just use a MS Word template and Avery business cards or just use heavier weight paper and cut them out yourself.

Good luck on starting up your club! Take Rev up on the forum section for your club. If you already have a link to the section you can put it on the cards. It's easier to plan stuff online.

 

[allabout]

Very cool, nice bright flyer. That gets attention I'm sure! Yeah I think if we stick with it we can get some momentum built up and have a decent club.