"This club is full!"

[Furface]

Round this way, we are finding more and more clubs not taking any new members (See, eg, the thread elsewhere about Dearne Valley). We also have an endless demand for Beginners' courses, and consequent new membership. Made me think.
a) What determines the size of a club? Is it the profile of members (if the ratio of "novices" to experienced archers is too large)? Size of field/ indoor facilities? Number of willing volunteers? Availability of coaches or others willing to help novices develop? Or even that the storage available is not enough to accommodate enough bosses to cater for more members?
b) Is the answer to form new clubs? Or get the volunteers better organised?
c) Should we just not put on courses (and lose public interest)? Or put them on then say sorry but no club will have you. Or put them on, take the members, then have over-stretched facilities?

[TJ Mason]

I've also noticed this phenomenon. Limited faciliites seem to be the biggest cause.

There's also an element of people feeling uncomfortable with the number of new people coming into the sport. I think the increased interest is a great thing, but I know of a few clubs where the members just want to turn up and socialise with people they've known for years.

My own club has a general meeting coming up soon, and I intend to raise this very issue -- whether we should cap the membership number because of the limits of our facilities. We're OK for outdoors, but our indoor facilities are sharply limited and I've had no luck so far in finding alternative or additional facilities. Maybe waterproofs are the answer?

[Rik]

Limiting membership? There's a description which fits a club which doesn't welcome new members: it's "dead". The appearance of life might persist for a while, but eventually it will fade...

We're currently undergoing a period of expansion. Big beginners courses and trying to retain as many people as we can. We believe it's the only way for a (smallish) club to survive for the long term. With less than 100 (paper) members you're probably always teetering on the edge of extinction - it only takes a few key people to leave (or expire!) and a club is in real trouble. Normal turnover suggests that if you aren't always taking on new people, your club will be dwindling in size. You have to take on new people, even to *maintain* a steady state!

We had to expand our indoor usage to two days last year, to cope with extra people, but our outdoor facilities aren't stretched yet (could probably take twice as many regular attendees), so we're looking for a bigger indoor venue. It's not urgent yet, but we're trying to think ahead (even working on a development plan! Lord doesn't that sound organised...?).

[Marcus26]

Our club started thinking the same. We have an awesome indoor range of our own and in2 years went from 4 regulars to 20. We have a membership of 160 and some of our executive started saying "we should limit membership"
Simple answer was what Rik said, we do that we die out. Best solution is that if you are busting at the seems is to lobby your local council for more land. May not work where you are but worth looking into.