Raise my club profile

Overview

The purpose of Bridge NSW is to foster a vibrant and inclusive bridge-playing community across NSW through leadership, advocacy and support. Central to that activity is the network of clubs throughout NSW.

Bridge NSW can only succeed if the bridge clubs of NSW succeed in growing their members and providing more opportunities for people to get involved.

To achieve this, several initiatives are being developed to support clubs to grow and thrive and to build a collaborative community of connected clubs.
This begins with raising the profile of each club, with your own players, with your local community and with the bridge community of NSW.

Profile with members

For many, the bridge club is a nice pastime to enjoy the game in a socially positive environment. As such, their enjoyment can depend quite heavily on the etiquette of other players at the club.

Players may not always appreciate what it takes to pull off the feat of making a duplicate session available. Therefore, it is crucial that clubs are transparent with their members, to allow them to feel engaged and valued within the community.

Positivity is how we should all aim to grow the game of bridge!

Behaviour guidelines

Many clubs will have had the unpleasant experience of disruptive players ruining other members’ enjoyment. A two part approach to dealing with bad behaviour is recommended:

  • Promote fair play and being a good sport. Prevention is better than cure!
  • Set up complaint handling and disciplinary procedures for dealing with bad behaviour. People may need training so that roles and procedures are understood.

Bridge NSW has published Behaviour Guidelines to assist clubs in these two endeavours.

Transparency

Bridge players turn up at your club and sit at a table. A director distributes table numbers, boards, possibly movement guides and announces the movement. At the end of the session results are calculated and placed on a noticeboard and possibly a website. In most clubs you get a cup of tea, sometimes a drink.

Sometimes there are special events. The Director is only one of the people who make all this happen. Depending on the specifics of your club a whole host of people are doing things that make weekly bridge possible.

In raising your profile with your players you need to develop a great degree of transparency around all the work it takes to make bridge sessions possible. I know club treasurers and secretaries who regularly go unacknowledged despite doing far more work than Directors.

Transparency is the first step in succession planning.

Planning for growth

Clubs can function with very low numbers playing a two or three table session once a week. But bridge is far more enjoyable having nine or more tables and having a few sessions a week.

To sustain that number of players and sessions the club needs a plan on how it will find new members and how it will retain existing ones. As most clubs have had a decline in membership over the last decade every club should have a growth plan.

Bridge NSW is preparing a template for a growth plan for clubs. The first key to success in growing your club is to engage all members in the plan; one of your best marketing resources is the word of mouth of your players.

Profile with local community

There are plenty of opportunities with radio, TV, and social media that could definitely help boost the bridge signal within the local community.

But don’t forget about all the “archaic” options like noticeboards and fliers that are still powerful tools of advertisement in this day and age.

However you choose to make bridge known within your local community, do so with confidence and a smile!

Branding

You want to build a clearly articulated visual identity for your club. The starting point is a logo of some kind. This logo needs to be incorporated in a letterhead, brochure design and any other printed or online material.

Where possible include clear signage on the building to make sure people know there is a bridge club operating there.

Conduct a search on Google Maps for your club.  If it doesn’t come up set up a Google profile.

Online presence

Some clubs have their own websites – many of which are  frameworks developed by the likes of Bridge Webs and Altosoft. But EVERY club should have a Faccebook page, including those clubs that have websites. If you post regularly to your Facebook page and get all your club members to follow it your content will start appearing in the feeds of other people in your area.

We have prepared a guide on establishing a Facebook page. Note a page is different from a group, a page is its own site with editorial control. A group is just an assemblage of Facebook users. Bridge NSW has prepared this guide on setting up and managing your Face book page. If you want further assistance email office@bridgensw.com.au or community@bridgensw.com.au.

Local media

One thing is certain, local media won’t talk about you if you don’t tell them about youself. The story only needs the most tenuous of hooks, a new youth bridge session, a significant club milestone, success of a local player in state or national events.

Examples of successful local coverage have included WIN TV News story in Towwnsville about a congress,  WIN TV News story in the Illawarra, the ABC coverage of the ANC, the Illawarra Mercury

The Illawarra Bridge Association newsletter repeated an article by Paul Lavings that referred to coverage in Bendigo Weekly.

Community institutions

Advertise your clubs on community noticeboards wherever possible. Also promote yourself through other institutions like schools, libraries, rettirement homes and other community clubs.

Many doctors surgeries and other locations have brochure holders. A DL brochure (A4 page folded in three) can explain the benefits of bridge and details of your club. Bridge NSW will develop a version of this brochure designed for club branding and location information.

Profile in the bridge community

Bridge players tend to talk about bridge with their families, friends and virtually anyone else they meet! When people talk about bridge, it can raise the profile of any bridge club.

To raise the profile of your bridge club, try the following:
– Share online social media posts
– Participate in local and state (congress) events.
– Run Beginner and/or Improver Bridge Lessons at your club. There is plenty of material here and under the Club Resources tab at the top of the website
– Make sure your club details are up to date with the ABF and Bridge NSW

There are patches in Sydney with a number of clubs within a few suburbs of each other, and there are country areas with clusters of towns that are one or two hours away from one central town. These create great opportunities for working together to grow bridge.

Update your club details

Bridge NSW has reduced the amount of information we publish on our website about clubs. Our goal is to generate traffic to your website.

Accordingly the only information we require is relatively static or is captured elsewhere. We have not recreated the old Update Club Details form from the NSWBA website, all it did was generate an email for manual updating.

Your club is required to maintain details with the ABF Masterpoints Centre for both the Secretary and Masterpoints Secretary. This detail is entered through the administration log in and changed directly. Other clubs can access this detail from the Club data file included in the Masterpoint Centre downloads where they can also obtain pre-formatted address labels. If you change any of these details with the ABF Masterpoints Centre please send an email to office@bridgensw.com.au.

The static information we publish on the new website is your club’s address and your website and/or facebook page. We list your club by every location you play at so please contact the office if you add a location or change locations.

We keep a record of who we need to send our invoices to in our accounting system. To change the details of where you want invoices sent to please email accounts@bridgensw.com.au.