Boosting Declining Turnout

Chess Clubs
1

I am a club officer in a local chess club. We meet once a week, play casual games as well as unofficial tournaments on club night, have rated Saturday tournaments regularly, but for the past several months, turnout at chess club has been down, and shows no signs of recovering. :frowning:

An average club night might draw anywhere from 6 to 12 people (a small core who almost never miss and some other semi-regulars) but for most of the year turnouts of three, four, or five have been most common, reaching 7 only once this year. Weā€™ve had to cancel half of our unofficial club-night tournaments because there arenā€™t enough people to play in them.

Turnout at the rated tournaments is also down, five of the last six have been below the break-even point. Weā€™ve tried tweaking the format a little, trying to lure more players, but to no avail.

The club takes in sufficient money elsewhere to cover the tournament losses, (at least so far) so we are in no immediate danger of going broke, but Iā€™d still like to boost turnout, both at club meetings and tournaments. What is a chess club, if people arenā€™t going to come and PLAY CHESS??!!

There are a number of people who pay their club dues but rarely or never come to club. (Perhaps they like the club newsletter.) I would like to get some of them to come and play chess more often, as well as increase the number of ā€œcoreā€ members who come almost every week. A reasonable goal is to get an average of 10 to 12 people on any given club night.

Any thoughts?

2

Need a little bit more information on your club.

  1. How many members are USCF members and non-USCF members?
  2. How often do you have a club tournament?
  3. What time controls do you have for the club tournaments?
  4. Do you have tournaments other then just club tournaments, like open to anyone in the state?

If you have a lot of tournaments, rated or non-rated. It can burn out the players as they only play with each other. If the club members are in the same rating class, then it would not be much of a problem. If on the other hand having a huge difference of ratings the expert would get bored with the class D player and vice versa.

It is starting to be Summer, and clubs do take a hit during this time. If you are looking for new membership, start to have state wide events to bring in members from around the state.

Do a little traveling, going to other tournaments in the state to make sure the players know about your chess club. As the grape vine of a few visits to other tournaments can bring in needed memberships. If the people in the state know of the club, they will be talking about it. Even if they are never going to a meeting. Sooner of later someone will come just to visit the place.

3

Hereā€™s some brainstorming for you.

Survey your members. Heck, itā€™s probably small enough that you can probably personally call or email most of them. Ask them why theyā€™re not coming out.

It may be a timing or convenience factor. You donā€™t say what times you meet or where you meet. For instance, itā€™s hard to get people who are parents to any kind of club meeting before about 7:30 p.m. Or maybe Sundays would be better than Saturdays.

Do you meet in a convenient, comfortable location with good parking?

Maybe move your meetings to a park for the summer. I say that assuming you live in a climate where that would be a reasonable thing to do.

You may need to do some marketing or outreach to boost your active membership enough to have a critical mass of people. Otherwise, who wants to come and play the same five other people every week?

One other thing occurs to me: in a group this small, if thereā€™s one obnoxious person, that may be turning some of the other members off. Iā€™ve seen that kind of thing undermine small recreational groups before. Not sure what you do about this, but it may be a factor.

4

Iā€™m involved with a small local club too and our turnout goes up and down, and to be honest I would like to have 20 people show up to our club nights ā€“ unfortunately that doesnā€™t always happen.

Couple of things:

You are going to lose people in the summer, even if you hold tournaments. Lots of people will take vacations or just decide they would like to be outside for a change.
You could try having a club meeting at a park (outside) or throwing a tourney outside. This, unfortunately, brings up its own problemsā€¦

Location and visibility is important:

Have a club website ā€“ itā€™s nice to be able to do a search on the web and find a chess club locally. Itā€™s also free with some sites (i.e. yahoo, geocities, etc.)

Try a local ad, or let a local newspaper know about your club. Sometimes theyā€™ll put you in for free. Donā€™t try papers that have subscriptions, try the ones that most of us get in the mail everyday and just throw away anyway. ā€“ Its almost always free to get a little blurb in those ā€œfreeā€ papers.

Try flyers at high schools, universities, senior centers and community centers. You can try elementary and middle if you are going in the scholastic direction. For the schools try to get administration approval, some school administrations may even help (but donā€™t expect this).

If there is another local club in your area, try merging with them or discuss ways that benefit both your clubs.

Since you are an officer, Iā€™m sure you have a business meeting for your club. If you donā€™t, then you definitely have to have one, where you can have a think tank on issues like attendance and club growth, change of venue, change of meeting day, etc. etc.

Think about the name of your club. (this refers to a post in another thread). Make sure your club name is recognizable, i.e. donā€™t call it Red Storm club because that doesnā€™t mean anything to the people in your area, or even state for that matter. Try something like Dover City Chess Club, or Central Illinois Chess Club.

Try to get some support from your state chapter. Talk to them, they will at least try to help you. They could possibly hold a state tournament near your area. (this is a stretch but at least start a dialogue with them!)

Location, Location, Location. Try as best as you can to have a well-lit, quiet area for your club meetings. Try as best as you can, to have the location be easily accessible.

They way you treat and welcome ā€œnewbiesā€ to your club, IMO, is of the utmost importance. You want them to come back, and you NEED them to come back. Even if they are a weak player, offer as much assistance as you can. Books, readings, instructions. Be cautious of this, because at some point they need to grow on their own as well. Have them play your clubs ā€œnicerā€ players at first, those that like to teach or are more on the friendly side of things.

Be mindful that it is difficult for many to make a commitment of once a week, or twice a week for chess.

STICK TO YOUR GUNS. Itā€™s impossible to please every member of your club. Some may want to play quick tourneys once a night and some will want G90 Swiss over 5 weeks. Some may just want to sit and play for fun. Make a decision, be consistent and run your club as best as you can.

Bottom line:

Plain and simpleā€¦ itā€™s not easy to run a club. It takes a lot of effort. Be patient. BELIEVE.

Regarding tourneys:

Make sure tourneys that you or the club promote or run, go smoothly and without major incidents. Try to have a Good, FAIR TD that is aware of the rules, but also aware that this is just a local level club and that he is not directing a US Championship.

Advertising is extremely important for tournaments. Get the word out as early as possible. And make sure the ā€œwordā€ is as ACCURATE as possible. Hopefully you should have a yearly calendar of events or even a 6 month calendar available to your club members. (on a website is best, or in the club newsletter)

Take a look at some of the older posts in this forum. There are a few ideas in them as well.

Hope this helps! And hopefully other people in this forum will have great ideas too.

5

Work with the other clubs in your local area. They are going to have the same Summer problems as yourself. See if you can have a club vs club tournament. It would give the club members some other people to play with.

Never did get much feedback with newspapers, as they are not club or tournament players. Ever see the USCF do any advertisment for membership in the newspapers?

The state wide tournaments, is the only rational way to have a large club turn out. Before having my tournaments, the club was only on a Monday. The turn out was like 4 or 5 people every Monday. The turn out on a Monday is up to 16 or 20 on a Monday, and we have started a Wednesday meeting that has around 6. Have even organized some at the spot club quick events. Even had a number of matchs just to get the players into the mood for chess. Now Iā€™m working on someone that has come to the tournaments to watch, into joining the USCF in a few more days or weeks. Even had a call from a expert that retired 9 years ago, wanting to get back into the game. Itsā€™ slow work, but work with one member at a time.

6

Thanks for the comments. Weā€™ve tried most of them, with mixed resultsā€¦

The club has been around for years, and it has had its ups and downs in turnout, but this is one of the longest ā€œslow timesā€ Iā€™ve seen since I joined the club (in 1997) and summerā€™s just getting started.

We have currently about 35 members, of whom approximately three-fourths belong to the USCF. For the past five years, membership has been stable in the 40s with a renewal rate of about 70%.
We have blitz once a month and a G/15 once a month, both non-rated. But several of those weā€™ve had to cancel for lack of turnout. We have regular rated tournaments once every two months. We get a fair number of people from neighboring clubs in our tournaments, and I go and play in theirs.

Did it. Last year we sent out surveys to all club members. We got an abysmal 18% response rate, not enough to draw many conclusions. We had a special meeting and implemented several suggestions we received, but nothing changed.

I have to admit our location is functional but not ideal. The board voted to stay put though because we donā€™t really have anywhere else to go. The club is NOT on good terms with the city park district otherwise that would be a good idea for the summer!

Last time we did that was 2001. None of the other clubs in the area have expressed much interest since then, unfortunately.

We hosted a state tournament two years ago and lost our shorts from inadequate turnout (there were other factors but this was the most) but weā€™re organizing a ā€œregionalā€ tournament later this year thatā€™s not so big as the state tournament but bigger than the ones we usually have. Maybe more people will play in this one.

One thing the club does not have is a web presence. I donā€™t have enough computer knowledge to pull that one off, so next time we have a board meeting Iā€™ll be sure to bring that up.

Our last large-scale membership drive was four years ago, it may be time for another one.

Youā€™re right itā€™s not easy to keep a chess club running, but I enjoy doing it, because I am addicted to chess. (Iā€™ve got FICS running behind this window as I type this! :laughing: ) Anyways, thank you all for the advice, Iā€™ll bring it up at the next board meeting, maybe even some of the things weā€™ve tried and failed might be worth another shot.

7

Submit rated game on line. I took my son to some tournaments because TD submit results online. I will not take my son to any tournamant that submited game results to USCF 6 months after the game.

8

Oooh, I bet this is THE Rochester from FICS. Catch you at the library sometime! ā€“ namdoog = classAvenger :slight_smile:

For several years FICS kept me going, but now there is a club at the college nearby. Turnout is not so good, though, so it will take some work to keep it going - as always. Thereā€™s not much chess activity in the area, but Iā€™m thinking a visit by an area Master would generate some interestā€¦ Also trying to talk the club prez into doing a speed tourney or simul in a public placeā€¦

Good luck!

9

Yea, Iā€™ve had some turnout problems as well, but then considering that we just started a couple of months ago, I guess that could be expected. A few weeks after we started, we had about 15 high school students show up, but that number is down to one right now :frowning: So we average about 5 as well, and I guess summer will only make things worse. Thanks for all the advice/tips everyone gave though, hopefully Iā€™ll be able to use them myself! Now Iā€™d like to respond to some comments:

As for newspapers, if it werenā€™t for them weā€™d be averaging 1 or 2 for each of our two weekly meetings. They ran stuff free, and that is how I got most of my members for both meeting places. The local TV station even agreed to run an add (I think that is all they run) for us for free! It was just a simple text add, but that is what gave us the 15 highschool students (that might hopefully come back after summer)

As for a simul, that would be a good idea, but Iā€™m the best player of the club, and with a rating of 1725, that isnā€™t too much to brag about when it comes to a simul. I have done simuls before, but Iā€™m afraid that if any 1200ā€™s or better come, Iā€™d be a can of fried beans. Another club 40 mins away has a few people that could beat me even if Iā€™m not playing a simul (although I doubt if theyā€™d come to play me). That brings up another question, what weight does ā€œthe highest rated teenager in the state of ALā€ have? If I had won the state high school championships, that might give it a little more weight, but because of problems with the organizer, I was unabe to attend, and a 1500 ended up winning :frowning: Oh well, Iā€™ll just keep going, keep advertising/inviting, and keep hoping that we will grow one day

Thanks again everyone!

10

Having rated games is the best way for the club to build itsā€™ membership. Clubs that do not have ratable tournaments have been large with members, but withour any organized standing. There are tons of coffee shop chess clubs, most of the players are not in the mood to join the USCF or even pay to be in a tournament. Most are not even in the mood to pay for the cup of coffee.

Having a chess club with USCF members, can and has been a hard sell for any organized club. It is not the cost of the USCF membership, itsā€™ what the player can get out of a USCF membership. If the club does not have any tournaments, then there is verly little the player would get with a USCF membership. The club has to go past having only club tournaments, as it would become very boring to play the same person week after week month after month.

11

Itā€™s difficult to express how wrongheaded this sounds to me. I am all for promoting the USCF, but our organization is the top of a pyramid, whose base is formed by casual players. The most important thing a local chess club can offer is a place to play casual games face-to-face. Some members may never join the USCF or play in rated tournaments, but itā€™s a lead pipe cinch that those interested in chess who never discover club play will never become tournament players.

Casual chess always comes before organized play, so promoting casual play ultimately promotes the USCF.

12

I think it is very difficult to come up with general rules. What works at one club could be completely unsuccessful at another.

About the only rule Iā€™m sure of is that clubs MUST find ways to bring in new members. Clubs that donā€™t have a source of new members will eventually die off as older members move, lose interest, or pass away.

The challenge for each club is to figure out what it is that will bring them new members, and for each club the answer to that is likely not only going to be unique but also change over time. What works now might not work in 2 years.

Iā€™m almost inclined to say there is a 2nd rule: Bughouse chess kills off clubs. I think its an activity that tends to crowd out both rated and unrated tournaments as well as a lot of casual play, and it is definitely an activity that tends to discourage newcomers from getting involved in club activities.

I think a failure to attract new members has been a large part of the USCFā€™s problem during the adult membership decline that began in 1996, too. Back in the early 1990ā€™s it was not unusual for the USCF to sign up 6000 or more new adult members each year. In 2004 I think they signed up about 3100 new adult members.

13

You might try to get a list of active USCF players from USCF and send them postcards. A good $50 in mailing telling them about your club and your tournaments is a great way to advertise. Even if you send it out to 500 people and only 2% respond, thatā€™s a new 10 people, which would be a 25% increase. That $50 would pay for itself quickly.

This has been quite successful for me in the past.

14

Weā€™ve got the same problem in our club. Ourā€™s is seen as an adult club only, but thatā€™s not what we envisioned, and is certainly not consistent with our constitution. We are getting 4-6 players each week, and sometimes 1-2. The ā€œplaying the same faces every weekā€ does get old, but what are we to do?

I think one thing is that we have to get the youth involved. Our city has a population of 120K+, with 30 public schools. Yet, there are outrageously few schools who have a chess club. And with no teachers on our membership rolls, we canā€™t seem to get them involved.

I would like to know how to get the public schools active. At one time, (1987) all 30 schools had an active chess club. Not any longer.

One other point, relating to Mikeā€™s ā€œBughouseā€ events. How defeating is Blitz chess to the club. Only 2-4 players are any good at Blitz, and 1 player will play only Blitz, so he doesnā€™t get to play much. Most of our members like slower games. Even still, with only 4 players showing up, itā€™s very difficult to keep our rated Quicks going, because most like their regular rating to go up, but we donā€™t have time to do slower games.

My main questions are:

  1. How do you see Blitz as a factor in club membership and,
  2. Is there any documentation online about how to approach schools?

Thanks,
Terry Winchester

15

Rather than being a primarily rated game club or a primarily blitz club, we tried a different approach. Most Thursdays (our meeting night) we have casual play from 7 to 8 and then a G/90 non-rated ladder game (new season starts in November and has 30-35 ladder nights). Our ladder has #1 play #2, #3 play #4, etc., with a proviso that you get four different opponents before playing the same one again. At the end of the season (in September) the top eight on the ladder play a rated round robin for a traveling trophy and the second eight play for a less prestigious traveling trophy, while those that donā€™t make the top 16 play in a 5-round rated Swiss where we just pair whoever shows up each of the five nights. On the ladder you get one point for a win, half for a draw, 0 for a loss, and get listed as playing one ladder game regardless of result. The top eight and sixteen are determined by ladder points scored, and ties are broken in favor of who has the most ladder games (we decided to give more of a reward to participating more nights rather than to a higher winning percentage - in retrospect that tie-break was a great suggestion by Kevin Schmuggerow). Our weekly participation has increased by 60-120 percent since implementing this form of the ladder.

Over the same time frame we became quite active in assisting with scholastic tournaments. That has resulted in a number of juniors also coming to the club. We are cordial and treat the kids as players instead of as ā€œmere kidsā€, which is fortunate when they improve to the point that they can defeat the adult players, since they return that cordial treatment.
The scholastic involvement has now reached the point where we provide a directing staff for Saturday tournaments that schools organize. The school arranges the site, takes the entries, gets the USCF affiliation and handles the prizes. We come in the day of the tournament to handle the tournament room and the back room only. We used to get involved with handling the USCF memberships, but the tournament sizes are now such that the schools do that also so that our people can concentrate on the pairings and the tournament room.
This has resulted in multiple organizers being able to do one or two tournaments a year without burning themselves out while the TD staff only has to dedicate some Saturdays and doesnā€™t have to burn itself out either. Also, it has allowed non-chess-playing people who are good at organizing an event to do so (with some input from us as to specific chess-related needs) and has thus helped expand the number of tournaments. Many school organizers were very leary of being the organizer/director, but quite willing to be the organizer as long as they could use a commonly used directing staff.

We also have 6-round Feb-Mar rated club championship, a one-night quick-rated G/10, a one-night quick-rated G/15, a one-night non-rated G/5, and 0-2 GM simuls per year. The tournament entry fees are considered included in the annual dues, and the prizes are trophies only. Just this past year we joined a chess league (non-USCF-rated games). Those activities seemed to maintain the membership rolls (with only one league season we arenā€™t yet sure of the effect league participation has) while the aforementioned revision to the ladder and the scholastic involvement seem to be the primary causes of attendance increase. Our geocities web site has resulted in some inquiries about the club, and a few of those inquiries has resulted in new members, so that is worth pursuing as well. Our web site is fairly simple and static.

The young kids do enjoy playing bughouse, and do so in the foyer after they finish their ladder game in the meeting room. By segregating it that way we appear to be able to satisfy the taste for bug that the kids have while keeping the kids improving their regular playing ability and at the same time limiting having bug disrupt the regular games.

Even if none of our activities are usable in your situation I hope they help you come up with ideas that are usable.

Jeff Wiewel
President of the Saint Charles (IL) chess club

16

Schools can be difficult to approach. They probably donā€™t know you, and my experience has been that these days schools are VERY wary of anyone from the outside approaching them without being invited in the door.

17

It doesnā€™t always work this way but, in our case, we didnā€™t approach the schools. Schools ended up approaching us. The first tournament (multi-school) was organized at a school by the wife of one of our members so that their son had a tournament to play in. Then some schools that went to that tournament decided they could organize one as well as long as a directing staff was available. As time went on Iā€™ve found out that tournaments were organized that simply assumed that weā€™d be available to direct (which is one reason I always try to discover the directing staff of any new tournament - I remember one tournament that a different director was thinking of running where I asked the organizer two months before the tournament if he had the contact information for that director, and then found out that he had already planned on using our staff when he first organized the tournament six months earlier).

Since the school does the organizing, most of the non-TD staff will be teachers or parents of the players. Some of the schools in our area supply some proctors as well to handle the simple questions in the tournament room. The TD room often doubles as the USCF membership office. There is visibly less risk if the only two rooms that are regularly used by your club members are rooms that are also being using by the organizers.

Iā€™ve done some high school tournaments where I am the only director. They have an 8-board team tournament and an individual tournament. For those Iā€™ve put the computer in the tournament room itself so that I can keep an eye on the games while handling the pairings and results. With the fewer questions that the high school kids have, and the efficiency of pairing 16 players in a single pairing, I have handled more than 200 players alone as long as coaches are available to serve as witnesses when I need to make a ruling on something I wasnā€™t at the board to see happen.

18

I wholeheartedly agree with Douglas! I think we made a mistake at Asheboro Chess Club (Asheboro, NC) in the past: focusing too much
on ā€œcasual playersā€ and ā€œnewbies.ā€ Focusing on the 8 out of 10 players
who drop in or want to learn to play did not serve us well.

We have reshifted our focus to push rated play and USCF membership. I
have finally realized that all of our ā€œcoreā€ members were USCF also, so
what we needed was a bigger core. Over the years, I spent a lot of time
and attention working with newbies. It has very rarely been worth the
effort. While I am still willing to teach a newbie how to play, I have shifted
my focus to recruiting 1200-1800 & up players. There are a lot of them
out there who want to play serious chessā€“if given a venue.

I would rather gain four USCF members than 10 non-USCF members.
Why? The retention rate for non USCF members is low. Our ā€œcoreā€ membership are all USCF members. Serious players attract more serious players. When serious players come to a club full of chaos, they donā€™t
return.

USCF membership should be a matter of pride for serious players. It will be, if clubs make it a matter of pride. I have a rating that is world-recognized! This rating is what keeps me a USCF member. It is a benchmark to measure my chess progress.

We have four quick rated tournaments under our belt now, with two Sat.
swisses scheduled. We have plans to move into new facilities soon, so we
can expand our hours and host rated chess on a weekly basis. When we
do, the format will be: 3 round Game/75 rated tournament on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Tuesday of each month. 4th Tuesday = Quick Chess rated. If there is a 5th Tuesday, weā€™ll do something special. This still leaves time for casual play from 6:00pm until 7:30pm, when rated play begins.
If there are numbers to justify it, we will have non-rated tournament play
along with the rated.

As an affiliate, we have signed up 10 new USCF members in five months.
I am extremely proud of this. The biggest key to our success, though, is
teamwork. I am not the lone ranger; we have four USCF certified TDs.
This really helps prevent burnout. I was the first to sign on as TD, but I
actively recruited other core members. I am hoping this will work out.

I think basing a club on casual players can work, but not well in the long
run. When I go to a chess club, I want to play serious players. Playing
a bunch of folks I can crush is not very interesting. Yes, there are very
good casual players, but thatā€™s not the norm.

A key to clubs having good Saturday swisses must be attracting players
from outside the club. This involves a lot of time and effort, for sure. If
clubs can develop a teamwork spirit, though, it will not be too much of
a burden on any one person.

I hope some of my comments have been helpful. I have been at Asheboro Chess Club for eight years now. We have only recently gone
to rated play, and it has been great. I hope we have continued success. I think we are finally on the right path.

Sincerely submitted,

W.T. Hales, TD
President, Asheboro Chess Club

19

Iā€™d suggest working through primary or middle school PTAs, or finding parents or teachers of grade school children who are interested in chess, and who support the idea of chess in the schools. Get a foothold at one school, and grow it from there.

For a school-based chess group to succeed in the long run and for its players to participate in tournaments, youā€™ll need grass-roots parent involvement. The parents who help do not necessarily need to be chess players.

We bring in various experts and tutors for teaching beyond the beginning level; however, parents take charge of organization, behavior control, and logistics.

Lately, Iā€™ve wondered if we can grow an active adult chess community out of the very active scholastic chess community in our town. Anyone have suggestions along these lines? :question:

20

Mister Hales:

Im so happy you have four certified directors. This will help prevent burnout, but help with the directors knowing they can be sick for some event down the road. As you do have directors that can fill in for a sick director.

Find out what time controls the directors like. Directors like to be the director, of a time control they like to play as a player. If the director likes slow time controls as a player, they burn out much faster with Quick or Blitz events. Make sure all the directors have the skill level for the next level of certification as soon as you can.

Would love to have as many directors in your club, only have myself as the only certified director. Have been sweet talking my membership without any luck :frowning: . If I was you, have the directors form the directors committee. Then have one become the chief director. The chief director would not be the chief tournament director for all the tournaments. Only be the voice of the committee, and help to organize the directors in some organized body.

It can work with any small club to be the president and chief director. That is what I have done with my club. Itsā€™ complex having two ideas then working well with both complex issues. Myself have nobody wants to be president or chief director, making myself the only one :frowning: . Since you have four directors, have someone else be the chief director. Iā€™m so happy you have the people in your club want to help.