As i open this new club i was thinking bout 20$ a year to join the club but if u just wanted a place to play u don’t have to join,but here is my question what should be the benefits of joining to persuade people to join…
Well, I just started a new club about 9 months ago and don’t charge dues. The reason I can do this is because I have set it up so that I have no real costs. As this new club and the members become USCF members and affiliates, I will charge dues.
Anyway, I would look at setting the cost of dues by what your costs to operate the club are.
In Peoria, Illinois we charge $12 annually. Once again, as a VP I found the meeting and tournament sight for free, about 8 years ago, and it’s still free. Of course that really helps keep our costs down.
For being a member, you get reduced entry to all the local weekend tournaments as well as no fees for the chess club night tournaments during the year.
A good idea, no matter what you charge is to have a Membership Tournament. This is where the entry fee for the tournament IS the annual dues payment. When I get the club to the level where there are prizes, I will go to local merchants and get things donated for prizes. There will be things like 6-packs of soda, food coupons, water bottles, etc. It’s fun. And this is another benefit for paying the dues. By the way, if someone doesn’t play in the tournament, they still can pay the dues the regular way.
Forget the memberships. It is not worth the extra paper work.
If your club has costs just make your entry fees high enough to cover them.
The biggest benefit is having a regular place to play and people to play and learn with.
When we started out we charged a very small amount for dues after people visited a couple of times. That gave us enough to cover start-up costs. Now that we run tournaments, the tournament entry fees help cover club expenses, which are minimal.
Are you looking to make money at this? Probably not. Figure out your expenses, take a guess at the likely number of members, then set your dues based on that.
We had a variation on the membership tournament Ron suggests. We did a couple of unrated blitz tourneys where you got free entry if you were a member.