Secretary's Report 2005-06
Membership
As a club we have been
somewhat informal about membership. I addressed that this season, asking
members to fill in a membership form. This allowed me to capture
contact information and allows the club to contact people if necessary.
At the end of this season we have 29 members on that basis. However, I
know that some of them are 'dormant' and we are unlikely to see them
again. I put the active membership of the club at 19.
I have no formal
measure of the membership of the club at the end of last season. I
estimate that the active membership at the end of last season was 16.
I intend to use the same process next year.
Recruitment and Publicity
In September 2005 I
created a small web-site for the club. I ensured that it could be found
in Google and I got free listings for it on some of the local listing
sites - Swindon council, North Wilts sports club, Communigate… Anyone
who enters 'volleyball Swindon' into Google has no excuse not to find
us, either directly or via a listings site. We are linked to from the
Volleyball England web site, the WVA web site, and a few club sites.
The site gets about 130 visits per month. I expect most of that will be from the members and our huge fan base.
We get about 15 visits
per month from other sites that link to us, and about 20 from the search
engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN). I consider these visits to be of highest
value in terms of recruiting new members. They are more likely to be
people who have not heard of us already.
| Active Members at end of last year |
16 |
| New faces that have attended at least a couple of training sessions - Estimated |
12 |
| Active members who have left us |
4 |
The Wednesday evening
sessions at Lydiard are popular. Personally I have only been to two but I
have seen four new faces there. If they turn into active members that
will to strengthen the club numbers.
Wiltshire Leagues
We registered six
players for the Premier League - the minimum we can get away with. We
registered 17 players for the First Division. For the first time in
recent years we were able to run the 'B' team without sharing players
with the 'A' team. This is an important development step for the club.
Even though the 'B' team was relegated this year - from Div 1 to Div 2 -
the players achieved a lot of match experience, the coach is happy with
the team's progress and the 'B' team is on a far sounder footing than
it was a year ago.
Communication
The email list is a
significant contributor to communication within the club. The email list
was started in Jan 2004. In the first six months it carried 7 messages.
In the first full year it carried 86. In the second full year it
carried 260. In the last 12 month it has carried 466. The list currently
has 34 members.
We get three copies of
the Volleyball England official magazine '3-touch' I pass these round
the members with a circulation list on the front. Please make every
effort to read it quickly and pass it on to another member as quickly as
you can.
Richard Howells - Secretary June 2006