9.2 Membership Recruitment

Membership Recruitment Planning

Whilst some member recruitment happens of its own accord, it's often worthwhile to create a more pro-active plan to attract new members. A useful starting point is to discover how your existing members found out about the organisation:

• By word-of-mouth from family or friend
• By introduction from another member
• By advert or notice in a newspaper
• By contacting the National Governing Body for the sport
• By contacting a Local Sports Partnership
• By searching on the internet
• By contacting a sports development officer or local authority department
• At a sports centre
• At a school

Knowing this information will help you decide where best to focus your future recruitment efforts, either because that route works well, or because you've identified a gap in your publicity.

Many local sports organisations find that a large proportion of their new members are recruited by existing members. You might want to consider running a campaign to "Bring a Friend", or to arrange publicity for a series of Open Nights for visitors and potential members. You might also arrange taster sessions at key times of the year to promote your organization and give potential members access to your sport.

It's very likely that your organisation will want leaflets, posters or flyers to advertise its activities. The key to success with printed materials is getting them displayed in the right places. Try to define where your potential members spend time, and look for ways to distribute your materials in those places.

Maintaining a website can also be an effective way of attracting newer (and often younger) members. Many NGB websites are hosted on the free space provided by Internet Service Providers to their members. Your website will be more prominent if it is linked to other relevant places; make sure that it has links to other relevant bodies such as your clubs, Sport Ireland, Local Sports Partnership and International Federation websites.

To develop even more ambitious plans, your management committee might want to establish a Membership Working Group to oversee a membership recruitment action plan.

Membership Recruitment - Action Plan

Downloadable Documents:

Code of Conduct

Organisational Development policy

Starting a Junior Section

Code of Ethics

Other relevant Templates