Topic Title

These are my (and Nick's) notes from the meeting on Monday to discuss the future direction of the club. It would be good to use this forum to discuss the issues below and move towards agreeing some actions - such as researching some of the suggested changes - prior to the next meeting.

Okay, what we said was...

As a club, we’re involved with a range of activities at the moment. Aside from stuff members do on their own, we ORGANISE or support participation in:-

Clubruns (52)
Pub runs (3)
MTB rides (8)
Hostelling weekends (2)
Pub nights (12)
Club dinner (1)
Charity rides (3)
…all of which are broadly social/leisure…

Audaxes (2)
Yorkshire Alps (1)
Other sportifs (6)
Sunday club runs (52)
Reliability ride (1)
…all of which are broadly challenges…

TLI TT series (12)
Open TT series (7)
Hillclimb (1)
Clifton Road Race (1)
BC / TLI / LVRC road racing (35-40)
Chaingang (25)
NPS (3) and other MTB races (10)
CTT TT's (10)
Cyclocross (6)
All of which are competitive.

We listed various other activities which we didn’t currently focus on and discussed whether we wanted to expand activities to include these. We decided we didn’t, and that we should concentrate on what we already do, and work to give better support to members doing these activities. This decision was because, with the current membership numbers, there were only limited people who were prepared to get involved in organising things, and we didn’t want to overstretch these people.

We decided we wanted to expand the club – get more members. This was because most of the activities listed were more fun with more people. One of the reasons quoted for joining the club was that you felt part of a team at events. We didn’t set any target numbers.

We talked about attracting younger members:-

Under-18s. It was agreed that in principle attracting young riders was “a good thing” but that it wasn’t essential to maintaining / increasing membership numbers (as the club has been expanding steadily by recruiting adult members). It was also felt that putting on activities for young riders required a lot of effort, and that young riders were more likely to lose interest and leave cycling for other sports, activities, or simply sloth. It was agreed that the British Cycling Go-Ride scheme was probably the best structure for encouraging young people into cycling; that we didn’t at present have the resources to get involved with it, but that in the future if the club had expanded and if there were sufficient members interested in this issue, that we might seek ways of getting involved with Go-Ride.

Students. Both the University and St.Johns had lots of students who ride bikes, some fairly seriously. The Uni has a cycling club, but this is non-BC-registered and is focussed more on off-road riding. Clifton could possibly do more to recruit students into the membership.

We talked about how the club was seen, both by members and the public. It was agreed that there were misconceptions about what we were like, even from within the membership. It was agreed that we could improve communication, both within the club and in terms of press/publicity.

Within the club this might be by using the discussion board more / thinking before we open our mouth when out on rides in company / doing a more regular electronic magazine.

Press/publicity might include getting YEP coverage on Leisure/fitness/lifestyle pages as well as sports pages / getting press coverage of social & challenge stuff as well as competitive stuff / getting Cliftonite published more frequently and as a glossy magazine which could be distributed more widely / getting all bike shops locally to publicise and promote our activities since it benefits them.

We talked about encouraging people to move from the “social” to the “competitive” stuff, and the fact that there were quite big gaps, that maybe needed “stepping stones”. For example, TLI TT’s had been well-run and successful but still failed to attract any new juniors or women competitors. Likewise the chaingang was a step up from any of the challenge events. We talked about TLI events being valuable in this – both the Boroughbridge road races and the TLI Thursday TT series, and looking at ways of supporting new participants in both.

We talked about coaching. Different people had different ideas about what this meant, especially who made a good coach. We noted the two main options of activity-based coaching (for example coached training rides) and individual coaching (one-to-one development/monitoring of a training programme). We said it was a way of encouraging people to move towards more challenging / competitive activities, and also a way of ensuring the club gives something that non-members couldn’t get. We talked about the benefits of club members being trained and accredited as coaches, which would add to skills within the club. We agreed availability of coaching would make club membership worth more.

Both of these above items were broadly seen as structures to enable members to develop, alongside support and encouragement given by members to each other.

We talked – briefly – about the issue of sponsorship, and asked what sponsorship could bring to the club that we didn’t already have / could get by other means (eg increasing subs). It was broadly agreed that any benefits which came from sponsorship should be available to all members, rather than be targeted at a specific group (such as road racers). We discussed a few possibilities:-

-Sponsorship to cover costs of hiring a mini-bus and trailer to allow group travel to MTB sessions / races / other events (we agreed that we’d not want to own a vehicle as there were maintenance liabilities)

-Sponsorship to cover costs of getting glossy & more frequent magazine published

-Sponsorship to cover costs of website

-Sponsorship to cover costs of a clubroom. Some members felt that this could add a new social dimension to the club, whereas others felt that the availability of pubs (eg Brigantes in Micklegate is now non-smoking) already gave us somewhere central to meet socially.

-Sponsorship to cover costs of competition – eg race licence / BC silver membership etc

-Discounts at shop

Okay... ...please post any major things that we missed. Then, where do we go with it?

Some initial thoughts on HOW DO WE INCREASE MEMBERSHIP?

* Better publicity for what we already do (as we're not wanting to expand our range of activities)

Which could be achieved by:-
-More publicity in local paper, specifically about stuff which might appeal to new members, and therefore not just in the sports pages. Examples would be features on commuting by bike, cycling for weight loss and fitness, holiday travel, cycling as a family, etc.
-More publicity via local bike shops; flyers/posters etc about club social/leisure activities, plus maybe make Cliftonite more of a showcase for the club and have copies to give away at CH (and possibly other shops)

* More efforts by members to bring in new people by personally dragging 'em along

* Look at why people turn up for a few weeks and then vanish (either by informal asking around if possible, or by follow-up phonecall or email - which relies on getting contact details from all first-timers)

* Target young people at Uni/St.Johns by liaising with clubs/contacts

* Find out if the club could offer anything (without increasing range of activities - so this might be through support from sponsor or whatever) which would make it more attractive to new members

* Specifically next year - capitalise in some way on the UK TdF start and the great tide of people rushing onto race bikes as a result (harr harr)

Just in case any of you are poised to fill this thread with wisdom but are confused by it being "locked" - The left-hand button with "locked" on it is the Start New Thread button and the right-hand one is the Reply to Thread button - just click on them as normal

OK, to try and get some debate going here, I don't think it's worth spending time trying to contact the uni clubs. We have a limited amount of time and could use that better than spending it trying to chase people who never get up on a Saturday morning, will leave in three years anyway, have their own club and then having to do it all again the next year when whoever was interested in us/our contact leaves.

We'd be better using the time to chase all those people who are already out their riding bikes. Then look again at the uni situation later.

OK Arthur, agree with the Uni thing about leaving in 3 years. But many stay on - York has a strange pulling effect. The link would be very easy to establish requiring little effort. Its just a case of a chat with their current club captain to make their clubrun part of ours and to publicise our club events. We could offer students membership at a discount rate if they are already a member of the Uni club.

I don't think students have changed that much in the last 15 years - I have a photo taken outside the cafe on a Uni clubrun in about 1990 with 24 riders. At that time we used to take regularly 4-6 down to the Clifton club events and used to supply the marshals for one of them. If we could add six riders to the clubrides and 6 to the club events it would add a good deal of momentum, not to mention finance. I currently get typically 6-10 riders on a Sunday - if I could get 12 regularly then I can split it into 2 groups with more closely matched strength and they'll get more out of it.

Bottom line is that this would be well worth the effort. In fact I think its my responsibility to arrange as club captain and I'll get on with it and make contact. We'll worry about the details of membership later.

We can always do more on the publicity side.
I did an Update last week full of stuff about clubruns that I thought everyone knew and it feels like I've said it all before, but have had several people tell me it was useful. We must keep banging the drum. So its publicity external and internal.

Like the YEP cycling for fitness idea.

Could we get a club permanent noticeboard with lots of colour and smiley faces in the window of CH?

More work on the welcome received down in the Square - all rides lead by a Clifton member would be a good start.

I'll put something in the Update this week about now being the time to drag new members to the Square.

Okay.. some more thoughts (I'm just relying on everyone getting bored with me posting, and firing in some thoughts of their own...)

We talked about wanting to encourage people to move from "recreational" to "challenge" to "competitive", and the need for "stepping stones" along the way to reduce the gaps. We also talked about the absence of women in RR's this year, and indeed also in the Thursday TT's. So, here's some suggestions (some of which have been kicked around on other threads before):-

Stepping stones into road racing:-

* Saturday training ride - after new year - to be fixed route (or a couple of routes) with an A and B group. Group A is faster riders. Group B to have one regular road racer each week to give advice etc. Routes chosen to allow slower group to do slightly shorter route and do first part and last part with the faster group so there's some challenge, but we don't simply get slower riders shelled out the back all the way round (and no-one gets grumpy about waiting).

* Chaingang likewise set up to start off and ride out together, then split into two groups - regular racers who go fast as possible, do two laps of the Spofforth circuit, and a second group for those heading into racing which does one lap and is chased home by the fast group. Second group to have one experienced racer with them each week (to be rotated) and to go as fast as it can *as a group* and to work on technique of riding close, through-and-off, etc.

* We speak to Cliff Beldon about CH putting up prizes for a Women's Challenge and a Newcomer's Challenge within the Boroughbridge TLI series. These races would then alternate inbetween the chaingang weeks through May/June. They're handicap races, ideal for newcomers as riders go off in small-ish groups.

Stepping stones into timetrialling:-

I'm much hazier about this.. ..any thoughts, anyone? Only ideas I have are...

* Winter turbo sessions somewhere
* Give people the opportunity to do the Thursday TT's without their times going up on the website, so they can treat them as practice sessions

...and coaching sessions. Anyone got any thoughts on coaching? How / where / who??

* Give people the opportunity to do the Thursday TT's without their times going up on the website, so they can treat them as practice sessions

Bad plan. The TTs are a race - let's keep them that way.

"Bad plan. The TTs are a race - let's keep them that way."

Could you explain that a bit more Arthur?

AND some thoughts on sponsorship. Setting aside CH's proposal, and basing this on "what could sponsorship do for us?" - we've said we want to...

Increase membership, so...

* Rob's suggestion of a Clifton "What's On" board at Cycle Heaven
* Get Cliftonite done quarterly (or bi-monthly) as a shorter-but-glossier colour magazine, sent free to members but also available free on the counter at CH (and indeed other shops if we could sweet-talk them into it)
* Look at getting "advertorial" coverage in YEP in the health/fitness/lifestyle bits of the paper

Encourage people into competition...

* Put up prizes in the TLI road races and (as this year) in the TLI TT's for women and newcomers
* Fund coaching within the club

I reckon there's also a two-way benefit in increasing MTB activity within the club; ie more members will mean more people forming an off-road group within the club (more likely to do joint activities), and more people doing MTB will mean more likelihood *at some point in the future* of maybe arganising MTB racing and/or getting involved in specifically doing stuff with children / young people.

So, could sponsorship be used to support off-roading? Only suggestion so far is...

* Fund hire of a minibus and trailer to allow group trips out to better MTB terrain

..any other thoughts?

"Bad plan. The TTs are a race - let's keep them that way."

Could you explain that a bit more Arthur?

They are a race, albeit a relexed low key one, hence they have a results sheet. The only people who would be bothered by not having the results published I suspect aren't new members (who wouldn't have anything to compare themselves to anyway) but prima-donna fourth cats who don't want everyone to see how slow they are.

'But I was on my training bike, done a hundred miles before, went hard at the weekend etc'

Hmmm well I'd kind of been doing a bit of asking around on this one, and believe me, the idea didn't come from me or any other prima-donna fourth cats. But aside from that, come on Arthur, what *would* encourage newcomers, and especially the ones we didn't reach this year, into timetrialling?

If there's a real demand for not publishing some results, then I guess we could with the quid-pro quo that that result wouldn't count for the series overall (since the website calculates the league and people use it to work out where they are). I'm not keen though really.

I think the way it works is that first we encourage people in via club runs etc, then after a bit of that if they want to race we've got a nice low-key race series waiting for them. If they don't want to race, then that's cool, and we can point them at stuff like the Fred Whitton etc if they want a challenge. Full results for that go up on the web mind....

I see the two questions as different

1) How do we get more members?
2) How do we get more people riding the TT series?

I think the answer to 2) is to try promoting the series more to people like the tri club and see how we go as well as encouraging our members to ride if they haven't before. And of course, hopefully more members leads over time to more people riding our TT series

"try promoting the series more to people like the tri club..."

Useful idea. How many tri clubs are there around York, and who do we have as contacts in them?

As a related idea, what about publicity via spinning classes at the local gyms - presumably someone sat on a cycling machine might be open to the idea of cycling on a cycle?

Like Arthur I am surprised by the attitude to publicising the results. Maybe we should look to encourage people to take life a little less seriously!

To be fair I don't really see much that can be done to make the Thursday TTs more accessable other than even more publicity. If they get any more grass-roots they'll be down into the water-table!