Joining Fees

Originally posted by Paramedic Members are generated by making sure the club gets first dibs on existing sailors who move into the area. Frankly if they like the water, the people and the format of club sailing they will join almost regardless as long as the figures are reasonable.

Edited by turnturtle - 04 Oct 16 at 10:16am

Originally posted by Tom J  I am yet to hear a convincing reason to have joining fees in the first place.

Edited by turnturtle - 04 Oct 16 at 10:46am

Originally posted by Tom J .... When most of my weekends are spent on the open circuit the majority of my club sailing would have been evenings of which there are 20? races per year. Factor in work commitments and holidays and I was looking at maybe 10 - 12 of those, weather permitting. When the joining fee alone is adding on £10 for every Wednesday night race I could do I did start to question if that was something I wanted to spend my money on. Hopefully most clubs want members who join in with racing when they can, are happy to do their duties and get involved with other bits of the club when they can too (plus pay their regular subs too of course) so I'm not sure how you qualify to be a good enough club member for a policy change but that comment is missing my point. My point is that joining fees can make a difference to whether or not someone joins a club, most club turnouts could be improved and I am yet to hear a convincing reason to have joining fees in the first place.

I see where yo uare coming from now....
Most people don't think in terms of joining just for 1 year?
I have had to think about 'value per race' myself this year, due to a house move and not getting organised until half the year was gone. We joined two clubs around May and I think I will be writing off the joining fee on one of them, but it's small beer in the context of a house move.
Likewise if you only expect to do 12 races, the duties become a turn off at some clubs.
Sounds like the club was not ideal for you anyway?
I'm not saying all clubs should have a joining fee, it's just that I think some clubs have their reasons and don't want to fiddle with a formula that seems to work OK.

My personal grumble is a certain club not having any flexibility about non-members crewing, when it's completely impractical for the crew to join. E.g. he's only in the area for 3 months weekdays on a temporary contract and goes back to T'north at weekends. And he's already an RYA member and member of Class Association and at least one RYA affiliated club of his own....

You can please half of the people, half of the time....

the joining fee is a good way to retain members, if trying another club for a season has no cost perhaps people will hop around the options

If you could work out how many members you retained compared to how many new members were put off by the joining fee......