My long term goal for Utah is to have our own building for a chess club. At present, we rent spaces from several groups and it feels like we put a lot of time and effort into that. It also prevents us from offering things like a weekly lecture/game series, summer camps, etc. My sense is that most chess clubs can’t use a building full time, so I assume that many somehow share the space. It also seems like paying for the ongoing maintenance, janitorial, utilities, etc. would add up quickly (to say nothing of the initial acquisition cost). What have other clubs done? Do you just rent a space? Buy one? Are membership dues enough to cover it? Thanks in advance.
I think it depends on the size of the city.
Alex Relyea
I appreciate that but would still be interested in hearing the experiences of others. I realize I’ll need to scale up or down to fit my market.
Hey David,
I opened a chess club in Louisville, KY in January 2016. So, we’re pretty new. However, I will share our experiences so far with you. Sorry I didn’t get to your post sooner, the past month has been state championship time here so I was super busy organizing those events.
Anyway, I did a lot of research into chess clubs before we opened ours. I noticed the very wide variety of pricing structures for clubs. Some clubs charge an annual fee, some charge for entry, some take money from entry fees, some rely on donations - I mean, it is all over the map. It is actually pretty tough to find a model that will universally fit everyone’s idea of success. Our chess club opted for charging $5 per entry fee regardless of the entry fee. For us, that has worked well in offsetting the costs of keeping the club open.
During the daytime, our club is of course empty like you describe. We have considered letting other groups in and what not but that is a pretty challenging task. Though, not impossible if you put your mind to it. But what I use it for is to run my business. For me, the $5 increments we get helps with the rent and whenever we’re short my company picks up the tab. But having office space has helped my company significantly within the community and it gives us a lot of options.
Another thing I do is online lessons, which help fund the club when needed as well. Doing lessons with home school groups can also fill time during the day. But ultimately, I think the key is to have a secondary reason to have a space. Chess is great, but it cannot be done 24 hours a day in person.
I do not know if our model would help you or not, but I do believe in its long term viability. For example:
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Relying on donations - this is a good plan if you have a lot of money in the bank to cover bad years. But as a start up, it is likely a bad idea. Short of luck or some short term mega-gains, this should likely result in losing money. Anything is possible, but I didn’t personally wish to put stock in this concept when we were starting out.
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Relying on memberships - This can work pretty well if you are in a high population area (high chess population area). However, people have to feel they are getting value. As many chess players are content to plop down wherever and play chess (coffee shops, libraries, parks, friend’s houses), simply HAVING a place isn’t always good enough. I find a lot of times older generations appreciate having a paid-for facility but for younger generations this tends not to be something on their radar.
Also, if people are to pay membership fees AND tournament entry fees, it often makes them feel they aren’t getting value. So, many chess clubs offer discounts to full members and charge higher entry fees to non-members. It is a time tested idea in the very few places where this model can work. However, do note that the ‘discount’ usually represents the amount of money the club intends to charge and the newcomers are simply paying an up-charge so there isn’t ACTUALLY a discount being offered but rather a “you don’t have to pay the up charge” fee.
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Relying on a Benefactor - Some clubs in the US are relying on some wealthy benefactors. Everyone agrees these clubs are generally pretty amazing. However, the same question looms for everyone: “What happens when the benefactor becomes disinterested or is not able to be involved for one reason or another?” So, if you can get a benefactor to help, then I say go for it and use that time to bridge your way into another model for long term sustainability. Of course, it can be difficult to simply do this but I have no idea who you know!
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Cover Charges to enter the club - I know some clubs use a $1 - $5 fee to enter the club, especially for people only there to watch games and not participate. This model seems to work alright but comes back to the concept that you need to create value beyond just having a chess club. I think this model also works better in high population areas. I think it is better to sell drinks for the $1 - $2 range than to charge a cover charge, personally. Some clubs actually do both but those tend to be higher population areas as previously mentioned.
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Charging $X per entry fee. Our club charges $5 to play in each tournament on top of the entry fee. Our minimum entry fee is $10 for our weekly event where people come play 3 quick G/30s at the Dillard Monday event we run each week (an event that has been perpetuated for around 25 years). Most of our other entry fees, depending on the event, range from $20 - $40. This model seems to work well, a “Pay to Play” model. There are indeed issues with this model, such as it means I often have to be the unpaid TD… but what else is new…? hehe This one has succeeded for us. To test out long term viability, we did NOTHING with scholastics (other than some summer camps we were going to do anyway) at our facility for the first year. Remarkably, it was sustainable. Now, we have added 1 weekly scholastic class and Tuesdays are a free night people can come play. Things seem to be going pretty well as we slowly incorporate new things.
So that is the advice I have, my experiences with running a club, and a portion of the research I did throughout 2013 and 2014 before opening a club and taking that financial risk.
–Ryan Velez
Ryan,
Thank you for the full reply. It was informative. I’ve been thinking about this for over a year for Jacksonville, FL, but have not gotten very far on it. This helps. ~Kevin
As I recall, around 30 years ago the Jacksonville Chess Club bought a building and then rented most of it out to other businesses. I think the architect of that plan was former USCF Secretary Ed Butler. It appears the club is still going, though I’m not sure if Ed is still around.
If a club, or a generous club member/founder, has the land, there are prefab building options that are quite viable financially. Small church congregations have gone this route many times. If the climate isn’t extreme, there are prefab metal building options for the exterior which can have the interior finished to basic code standards with volunteer labor. Prefab garages are another conversion possibility.
lowes.com/pd/best-barns-com … pOEALw_wcB
Be sure the prefab buildings meet local building codes for business occupancy, I’m not sure a prefab garage would.
A couple years ago I looked into what it would take to start up a curling club, the prefab buildings had some codes issues; solvable, but at a not insignificant cost.
Indeed you do have to be aware of code requirements. When our church was looking to expand a few years ago, one of the congregation researched prefab buildings that had been used by other churches. The variety of choices was quite extensive. Not a popular church design for New Englanders, but much more cost effective than the building that was eventually built. One member of the congregation opposed to the more expensive, custom design wondered aloud whether or not the Goddess really gave a ______ about how New Englandy the structure looked.
As for garages, I know several people who have gone the prefab way and included a small apartment above the car bay. Free standing and cost effective. I have a friend here in VT who made a prefab garage code compliant as an artist’s studio for his wife who is, drum roll, a working commercial artist. My recollection is that the biggest code requirements usually have to do with the pad or foundation and the plumbing for a bathroom. I’m not sure there are any real code requirements for kitchens having to be on the premises. There are of course, if you plan to have a kitchen.
There are lots of cost effective ways to create a habitable space. I’ve even seen converted shipping containers. Not my first choice. Maybe a yurt? 
Curling would require a much bigger building than one for chess. I’ve watched my Montreal cousins compete in a facility in Montreal. Very enjoyable sport to watch. The only event that I make sure to watch during the Winter Olympics is women’s curling…
I’m sure the vast majority of clubs either use a rented space, or a free room in a public place like a library or community college or high school. Our club got lucky. A local business owner allows us to use the conference room upstairs above his business for free. He even allowed me to bring bookshelves into the room to keep our chess sets and books on. Its big enough to host about 30 people playing chess, although I have never had near that many at a meeting. Our biggest turn out so far has been about half that. Its a shared room also used by some poker people, but the vast majority of the time the room sits empty, so people can meet there to play chess almost any time. And when its unoccupied, it is locked, [and also has cameras], so we don’t have to worry much about chess sets being stolen.
School and college spaces stopped being free here about 20 years ago, although the UNL chess club could still get free meeting space in the student union as long as their events met certain criteria for student participation. But when the officers of the club graduated or dropped out, nobody took their place and the club just stopped meeting.
Hotel space can be budget-busting, and some of the hotels have decided that they also want the sponsoring organization to have a million dollars of liability insurance.