The following is one guys opinion based on his experience with his state laws and should not be taken as professional or legal advice. Check with your local offices to find out exact details of procedures and laws in your area.
So from the posts above you should have an idea as to rather or not you want to go for NPO status, how many members you have and what kind of gear you need. I will talk a bit about some general ideas for marketing, managing your cash flow, some cheap places to get gear and improving your coaching level (even if the coach is not you).
Marketing: A lot of this will depend on the policy or the school/rec. group/church that your club is a part of, assuming that you are not running your own club and just renting space. Many groups like those mentioned above have specific policies about who can be a member or join their groups. This is why it is very important to know all the details of your hosting organizations policies. If they have not thought them out before, you should encourage them to work this out with you as it can effect your club growth, grants and income potential.
If you already know that your group has a limited selection criteria then it is still useful to advertise by adapting some of the ideas below. People change schools, switch churches and move into towns all the time so the more people that know about your program the more fencers you will attract.
Yellow Page Ad: Some people swear by these and I think it really depends on the type of business and the size of the area you live in. If you do go with an ad MAKE SURE that your group is listed under Martial Arts or Sports Organizations, otherwise you will have people showing up at your class wanting to learn to make wrought iron and get phone calls about chain link.
Phone Number: You should have one of these and put it on all of your literature and information. Make sure you have a machine or voice mail for it that mentions the club! If it is a generic greeting a lot of people will hang up before it is finished thinking they have a wrong number.
You do not have to have a separate line but it is a really good idea and they are fairly cheap. I have a cell phone just for our club with club specific information on the voice mail. It is fairly cheap (30 per month) and I can do all the club related long distance I need for no other charges.
I do want to say something about phone etiquette and professionalism before I finish this subject. I don't mean not talking with your mouth full or what not. What I mean is that if someone contacts you directly you should be able to give them: age range of fencers, cost, times, coaching info and a short description of how the program works. You should not have to make this up as you go along or go looking for written information. This is your club so know your program front to back.
If someone leaves a message, you should call them back within 24 hours. It is very annoying and unprofessional to call someone back a week or so from their first message and they should never have to play phone tag with you.
Webpage: You should have one of these. Period. Rather you build it yourself or have someone else do it, it is expected in this day and age. Web hosting is fairly cheap and a lot of people can do it from home so ask around at your club for volunteers before you shell out a ton of cash.
As to content you should have the following: hours, coaches information, class overview, salle rules and policies, any costs/fees and some helpful links to vendors, Fencing.net and the USFA at a minimum. It should be laid out in a clear style. Avoid very dark or cluttered themes and try to design it so that someone who knows nothing about fencing can walk away with a rough knowledge of the sport, or at least thinking it sounds like fun!
Community Calendars: just about every town has some of these and it is free to post your club info on most of them. They are very useful for getting the word out.
Media: Once you have some gear and members encourage the local papers and television stations to drop by. This can be a huge boost for your membership and spreads the word free of charge. If you have lots of media outlets in your town you may not want to swamp them all at once but spread them out and use them as a recruitment tool for the start of new classes or when your numbers lag a bit. Most local TV/Radio/Newspapers are hungry for Public Interest and Community stories so you may be surprised by just how easy it is.
Flyers: These are not a bad idea if you use them well and do not spend a ton of money on them. They should be a fairly clean design that can catch attention with a glance. You should have your phone number and web address on these at the very least. If you can have pull off numbers at the bottom so much the better. Place them at supermarkets, school billboards, libraries, game stores, rec. centers or anywhere else you think your target market would gather.
Paid for TV/Radio/Newspaper adds: These can be useful if you have the money for them. A lot of places give discount pricing to NPO groups but it can get very expensive.
Managing your cash flow: I will not spend a lot of time on this as it varies so much from one club to the next. The main thing I would want you to know is that a fencing club is a cash flow business! It you collect all your dues or grants at the beginning of the year and go on a spending spree for goodies you will find that you cannot sustain your club for the year. The same is true on a month to month models where you collect dues every month. Make a good, realistic budget and follow it. Period. Otherwise your club may not last its first year and this will hurt fencing in your area, waste a lot of peoples time and could result in hurt feelings among members and staff.
I will say that if you are working on a month to month model statements are a good idea. People seem more likely to pay a bill that comes in the mail than they are to remember their checkbook and bring it to class. It is not very expensive to mail to club members and it shows that you are professional, organized and seems to help put a value on the services that people receive.
Gear: There are a lot of places to buy your club equipment from, so I will list just a few. There are some things to keep in mind however, and I will touch on them below.
Cheap is not always a good value: If you buy an 8 dollar body cord that you replace every other week it is not as good a value as a 25 dollar one that lasts for several months! If one vendor is a few dollars cheaper than everyone else but make lots of mistakes on orders and does not ship in a timely fashion you are probably better of paying the extra few dollars for piece of mind and customer service.
Repair instead of replace: Find someone in your club that is good at repairs or learn to do it yourself. At the least you should know how to wash and take care of lames and jackets, rewire and troubleshoot weapons, trim/bend tangs for pistol grips and know how to repair or rewire body cords.
You can save a lot of money by rewiring bad weapons yourself instead of replacing them, and body cord end plugs last forever but the wire breaks a lot. Learn to do a few simple things and you can keep your equipment budget down.
Scrounge: If you are tight on funds contact other fencers/clubs/divisions in the area and ask if they have any old kit they would like to donate or sell cheap. A lot of divisions have boxes or reels that are obsolete and just need some minor repairs. They also have lots of lost and found stuff that they need to dispose of. The same is true for larger clubs and almost every experienced fencer has old pieces of kit that is just gathering dust in his closet.
Once you know what you will need, how much you can spend on it, and have gotten as much gear on the cheap as possible you will need to buy the rest from somewhere. I will list a few vendors below and tell you what I like about them from a club standpoint.
Blue Gauntlet: They have a good selection of beginners gear for not a lot of money. They offer a 20% discount on club orders of $100 or more. They ship fast, are fairly accurate and customer service is pretty good. Our club buys most of our beginner masks/clothing and steam weapons from them and we have been very happy with their kit. I would avoid their house brand electric weapons, body cords and reels like they were covered in anthrax spores. The also do not like to give Net 30 status to anyone. We do about 10-15000 a year with them and they still make us pay cash first, which is a bit of a pain.
Fence Smart: This seems to be the garage sale area for the Physical Chess/Blade/Allstar USA group. You can find some very good deals ($5 blades, $20 dollar jackets) and the service I have gotten has been good but I have always gotten the impression that they are not set up for very large orders and most of what they offer on sale are odds and ends that they do not have very much off. I could be very wrong on this.
The Fencing Post: My favorite US vendor. Great prices on top of the line equipment (Uhlmann/Allstar, Negrinni, Leon Paul, StM) and excellent customer service. They are also a great source of Stainless Steel lames for cheap and their prices are almost as good as BG for club range clothing. Since they are west coast they might work out better for you. They offer a 20% web discount but they do not have an SSL for online ordering so just mention the discount on the phone when you order. They often have things that are not listed on the main page (colored StM blades, Vniti blades, LP masks) so be sure to ask if you are looking for something special. They will sometimes give an additional discount or free shipping if you are ordering lots of kit (20 mask, jackets and gloves for example) but you have to haggle for it.
Overseas ordering: You can save a lot by going this route but it can be complicated, you could get hit with unexpected customs charges and the dollar is not very strong against the Euro at the moment. However if you want some nice kit, do not mind waiting a while for shipping and are willing to go through the effort you can save a lot.
For top quality Uhlmann/Allstar gear check out
http://www.fechtsport-langenkamp.de/html_en/start.htm Good customer service, English speaking and the ship to the US a lot so they can hold you hand the first few times. Not a good option unless you are spending several hundred dollars worth of gear but if you are buying for a club you can save hundreds compared to US vendors.
For cheap kit check out
http://www.esun.com.hk/products.html $30 dollar masks, $12 complete foils and $40 SS lames. China is where a lot of US vendors get their lower line of gear so why not cut out the middleman? Some things to think about before you order from any company in China or HK:
They do not take credit cards. All funds are bank check or electronic transfers, which can be a pain for a small club. Also the English skills are not that great and mix-ups are common.
Shipping takes a long time. Sometimes over a month depending on sea conditions.
If you need to return something chances are it will cost you more to mail it than you paid for it.
Unless you are ordering a LOT of gear it is usually easier to get your low end stuff through a US vendor.
Improving your coaching: Your club is only as good as its coach. That is not to say that a first year fencer cannot get others into the sport, but an experienced coach makes life much easier. If you are not an elite fencer or have not coached before, make sure that you educate yourself. Try to follow some of this advice:
Always be learning. Fencing.net, books on coaching, watching other coaches at other clubs, whatever. Never rest on your laurels or you will find your students overtaking you.
Ask coaches at other clubs if you can help them out with a few classes and pay attention. Some coaches are more than happy to do this while others think you are trying to take their students/business but it is worth a shot.
Be confident in yourself. A coach should LEAD a class. That means knowing how to do what you are teaching, being positive and upbeat and going through exercises and warm-ups with your students.
Never tell a student something you are not sure is true. Student/coach trust is very important. Resist the urge to guess. If you do not know the answer to a questions tell them so, but find out for them.
Know the rules. The modern ones. If you fenced in the 80's things are a lot different! Get the latest revision and study it, the athlete’s handbook, and the referee guide. All are available from the USFA. Also go to a big tourney and watch how the judges call things, how the fencers move and ask lots of questions (in between bouts).
Attend or arrange for your coaching staff to attend any referee seminars and coaching clinics in the area. These can be a big help even to an experienced coach.
USFA coaches College: Have a few hundred dollars in the budget that you can't find a good use for? Send your coach to the USFA coaches camp and he will come back a better instructor for it. It is a very cheap (considering) week long, intensive school that combines study and lots of hands on work. It will definitely improve any coach or fencer IMHO.
USFCA: Have your coach join the US Fencing Coaches Association. At present it seems to be a torrid little din of political infighting and juvenile behavior at its upper levels with virtually no customer service. Fortunately things seem to be improving, the rank and file are eager to help out and you get a groovy patch and a magazine geared towards coaching. You can also purchase Insurance and test for different levels all the way up to official fencing master.
In closing
Well, that is a lot of stuff to think about, and I hope I have not scared you off! Coaching/running a club is a lot of work but it is very rewarding and is once of the better things I have ever done with my time. When we first started out club it was four friends sitting around saying, "Ya know, that fencing stuff sounds fun. Maybe we should try it sometime!". In two years time we have grown to almost a hundred members, manage two school programs and help out with local parks and rec. classes. Two of the original members that moved out of town have started their own club and help run their local college team. Three of the original members are also serving on their Division Board. Oh yeah, and somewhere in all that we learned how to fence!
You will be surprised by how much interest a relatively obscure sport can grow if you handle it well. Fencing could be a much larger sport in this country but a lot of people have no idea how easy it is to start a club and most Divisions and the USFA do not do enough to encourage small start up clubs IMHO.
To your specific situation Govsecrets I though of a couple of another fundraising idea for you to think about.
PTA/PTO: Most schools have a fairly active Parent/Teacher group and they usually have or can raise money to get something like this going. For one of our school programs, between students who bought their own kit and moneys given to use by the PTO for gear we had something like 15 complete sets of loaner gear for the first class.
Best of luck to you and I hope all of this was some help to someone!
***Sorry for the huge post Craig!***
Linear Mode
