in a new small club is it wise to buy the boards ahead of time before the club first meet? or should we let those that want to play provide there own boards,clock and any other chess literature,etc?
I’ve always let players bring their own. If you have a few extra, then that’s fine, but I wouldn’t go out and purchase any.
Alex Relyea
Yes, you can require players to bring their own sets to your club.
When we started our club, we raised a small amount of start-up funding from members to pay for scholastic plastic sets and vinyl boards. This can be done via wholesalechess.com or cajunchess.com (or others–those happen to be two I’ve ordered from and liked) for under $100.
It’s helpful – but not essential – to have uniform, regulation sets for your club players. It’s more welcoming to newbies who may not have a decent set. And if nothing else, it allows two people who didn’t bring their own sets on a given night to play against each other without having to borrow a stranger’s set.
It’s even more helpful to have regulation sets if you’re going to run tournaments.
We do not supply clocks for our players. After a year, I had the club buy a relatively cheap digital clock ($30) with a delay so we would have ONE club clock. Our players have liked having that extra one around when batteries run out or they forget their own clocks, or when 8:30 p.m. rolls around and some of us want to play bughouse. 
And I always have at least two or three games at each tournament where both players don’t have a clock.