Akzidenz, having young players come to the club can boost the membership in the short term, and have a less obvious gain in the long term. The short term boost is obvious as you see the number of kids playing at a board. What I’ve seen over the long haul is that a number of those kids will stop coming as they get older and have other competing interests (a common problem with retaining scholastic players), but some of those players will eventually return as core members if they retain their interest as adults. Also, it seems that having a local club that they enjoy increases the chances they they will retain their interest as adults.
One key thing to remember is that the kids should be treated as players rather than “mere kids”. This also pays off in the long run by reducing the potential embarrassment when the kids get strong enough to start winning their games against the adults. It helps that our average member that has just finished a game against a kid is quite willing to go over the game afterwards and thus give the kid some impromptu tutoring. As the kid gets stronger, the roles can get reversed.
Partly because of the number of kids playing whose ratings have not yet caught up to their actual strength, our primary activity is non-rated but serious ladder play (see my first post in this topic). That also helps spark some more competitiveness between the kids as well. and makes them want to keep coming so that they can move up the ladder.
Because we treat the kids as players, they have increased their skill level faster than the average kid, and they have done well at the state tournaments. Because they’ve done well at the state tournaments there are scholastic coaches in the region who try to push their players to attend our club, and a few of those players eventually become core members.
We generally pull 30-45 players on a meeting night with about half of them being under 18, some of whom are under 10. Twenty years ago we were doing well on a meeting night that had 15-20 players. We have about 60-80 players that are active at some level in the club and more than 20 of those might be considered core members.
My second post in this topic backs up your assertion that you can have PTA members organize a school tournament even if they do not play the game. Our initial foothold in one school grew dramatically and the only effort we put into it after the initial work with organizers was to simply do our best as directors. Realize that as the composition of PTAs change (as children of active participants move on to their next school) you will see schools enter and exit the tournament organizing circuit, but the general trend has been an increase in tournaments.