Hello. I am a returning member of the Chess Federation (after many years away). I was curious if anyone had any advice on how to start a Chess Club in Sioux City, Iowa, United States of America. I am completely at a loss as to how to do it. HELP!!!
The hardest part may be finding a meeting place that you can regularly use.
If you plan to run US Chess rated events, you will need an affiliate, which currently costs $40 per year.
An affiliate can buy mailing labels of players in the Soux City area or do an email blast to players, but members can opt out of those, so you might not reach everyone. There aren’t a lot of current members in the area, only about 10 within 50 miles of Sioux City IA, there may be another 10 former members in that same area.
Contacting people running events in nearby cities (possibly as far as Des Moines) might help you find some more people willing to come to a club in Sioux City.
If there’s a local paper, be sure to send them information about when and where your club will meet and update them periodically about what’s happening at the club. Smaller newspapers are more likely to run stories about local events like chess clubs than major metropolitan papers.
If you are willing to have younger players involved, try contacting the math or science teachers at the local school(s).
You may be able to print up flyers announcing your club and its events and leave them at the library, churches and other places. The bulletin board at the grocery store might be a place you can post a copy, too.
Great advice Nolan!
I recently started a club in my hometown and I can tell you how the experience went for me.
I first printed out several flyers of two types. A small flyer that is meant to sit on a table in a stack and have people take a copy, and also the type of flyer that hangs on a bulletin board and people rip of a little info tab at the bottom. I placed them in as many as 25 places, including local libraries, post office, businesses, and even bus stops.
I then paid the $40 to affiliate the club, and became a certified TD. [to do this you must first be a USCF member and read the 6th edition of their rule book, then fill out a one page application that can be found on this website]. In subsequent flyers I advertised that we had the ability to hold USCF rated games.
I also created a facebook and twitter page for our club and post about the club regularly in facebook pages dedicated to the local community.
After a few club meetings I contacted the local newspaper and they came did a story on us which ended up being a half page article.
I also suggest doing something that makes your club unique. For our club, we also specialize in ancient forms of chess, in addition to modern chess. This has attracted new members.
MY RESULTS:
Over the first four months we have grown to the point where we are averaging about 12 members showing up each week. About half of these members are USCF members, with 1 new member and one returning member signing up through our club.
My down is somewhat rural and has a population of 30 thousand.
As for a location, sometimes local libraries will let you use a room in the building once or twice a week. A Boys and Girls Club or YMCA is also an option. For my club, we operate out of a conference room above a comic shop. The room is sometimes used for other board and card games. The owner of the comic shop has been very accommodating and has even allowed me to build 3 book shelves in the room to be used as our free chess club library.
@Nolan, I noticed you mentioned the number of members near Sioux City. Is there a way for me to look up members within 30 miles of my area?
An affiliate can order mailing labels for members, but members can opt out of those.
You can also order an email blast (sent by US Chess, so you won’t have access to the email addresses), but members can opt out of those as well, and not all members have given us their email address, either.
Otherwise, we don’t release information about individual members due to privacy concerns. There’s a demographic analysis tool in the TD/Affiliate Support Area that you can use to query about the number of members meeting various criteria (age, ZIP code, rating, activity, etc), but it only gives totals, not information about individual members.