My first role as Club Captain was getting all the new committee members together for a meeting on how we want next year to go; where we can improve from last year as well as carry on what had been successful. As we were all new members of the committee, there were a lot of things we hadn't experienced before such as handling money for the club, liaising with sponsors that would benefit our club and liaising with the union for funding and management. However, all the new committee members are strong willed and hard workers, so when solving problems, we are successful!
One of the main things that I felt was challenging for us this year was the change in membership to all sports clubs at the University of Leicester. All members joining sports clubs have to buy a sports card costing minimum £100. This is a much larger amount compared to the £25 membership people only had to pay the year before, so getting members would be harder for us.
This meant we had to make a game plan: we needed to make LUSSC as appealing as possible for members and show them that membership is worth £125!
Our Step by Step Guide on getting LUSSC it's members:
Action plan - This year we received extra funding from the union, so our first step was to evaluate where we could put this extra money into making membership of LUSSC more worthwhile. One of our main goals was to make skiing/snowboarding more accessible to beginners as well as experts. With careful work from our Treasurer, we managed to budget the extra funding so that we could give our Wednesday training sessions to members for free (including ski hire, travel, lessons and slope time!) We hoped this would be an incentive for people to join LUSSC as well as attracting more beginners to try out the sport.
Advertising - The design and Merchandise Officer got to work on designing leaflets, hoodies, flyers, posters and LUSSC personalised sunglasses to make our club unique and special against the other sports clubs the University had to offer. We used our great value Christmas Ski trip as the main selling point for membership.
Action - Fresher's week was our time to show how much LUSSC was worth being part of to new prospective members. We had a stall for the week where we all gave out leaflets, explained the history of the club and what we do to the new freshers. As well as this we visited halls and advertised our club there in case people hadn't made it to Freshers Fair and missed out on seeing our stall. This generated a buzz about our club, with lots of people starting to gain interest in becoming members of LUSSC!
Future - We had generated an interest in LUSSC, now our aim was to keep up that interest as well as carry on encouraging people to join LUSSC. So what is better than to organise the 'LUSSC Camera Social'? The Design and Merchandise officer designed our own t shirts which managed to sell out, meaning 150 were attending the social. The night was overall successful and definitely helped in terms of letting members see the benefits in joining LUSSC. As well it meant we could sell LUSSC in a friendly and social environment.
Reflection on the skills used/gained, and improvements for the future.
We now have 82 members and we are still growing. This demonstrates the success of our advertising and marketing schemes as well as the commitment the whole committee put into selling LUSSC.
I felt challenged by the change in the membership scheme, however I felt that we managed to overcome this challenge. I also enjoyed the fact that it was challenging and that we did have to work harder to achieve what we did. I also used skills that are vital to run a club such as communication skills, organisation, efficiency and problem solving skills.
One of the main things that I have learnt from this experience is that communication between the committee is the most vital thing to ensure what we are doing is successful. The use of our 'LUSSC Committee' facebook page has become valuable for communication of ideas and problems to each other and will be used for future discussions.
I've been thinking about my future, and the career I've been aiming to pursue is becoming a Primary School teacher. I have realised how the skills from being LUSSC captain can help in developing the skills I need to become a teacher i.e. management; I will have to plan lessons, and schedule day to day plans, communication; i will need to be able to communicate to pupils clearly at their level and as well with pupils' parents which will be using different communication skills.
