Want to Grow Your Membership Numbers?

One of the biggest errors that I see from rugby clubs is an overemphasis on recruiting. This is where you may be thinking, “if we don’t recruit, we won’t have any players.”

That is true and I certainly don’t recommend that you cease recruiting efforts. Far from it. What I’m saying is that too much attention is placed on getting people to try rugby. In the process, clubs often forget about and take their current members for granted.

Recruiting efforts need to continue, but you should be working even harder to keep the members that are already within your club.

If your club falls into this trap your membership becomes a revolving door of players that come and go after one or two seasons. This places extra stress on the entire club. The ultimate goal is to attract members and then retain them as they pass through the participation spectrum.

This strategy is no different than in a workplace. If you’re constantly losing employees, you end up spending increasing amounts of time and effort on recruiting. If you retain employees successfully, then efforts can be directed towards improving in other areas.

Keep what you have and then add to it year after year.

Attrition is natural. People leave the area for work, school, etc. They start new jobs, get married and start families (side note: this is the group that you entice into social membership) leading to responsibility changes. The goal is to keep everyone, but that isn’t realistic. However, retaining 80-90% from year to year is a realistic goal.

The key is placing effort into making your club a place that people want to come back to. To do that you need to provide more to your members than what happens on the pitch. If all you’re providing your members is rugby, you’re not set up to retain members for the long run.

Look at the clubs around you with strong support. I’m willing to bet they have a lot of involvement from past players. Keeping them involved leads to this group eventually becoming admins, coaches, volunteers, and sponsors after their playing days are over.

Some tips

• If you’re not already doing it, track your membership data. This is where it begins. If you have a Secretary or Membership Secretary, they should already have this data.

• Identify areas where you are seeing the most attrition from year to year and figure out why that is happening.

• Foster a positive club culture.

• Maintain a year round calendar of activities on and off of the pitch.

• Provide benefits to your members beyond the pitch.

• Stay active on social media highlighting all aspects of your club.

• Engage with past players/members. Keep them involved by inviting them to alumni days, fundraisers, and other major club events.

Treat member retention as an offshoot of recruiting. You’re essentially recruiting people to return each season. Which should be an easier sale, since you already have them in the door. Don’t just assume that people are coming back each year.

Give them a reason to come back year after year and you’ll start to notice the overall gains as you combine that with new player/member recruiting efforts.