-
What was the reason for jersey sales funding the club? Why not £10 joining fee?
This was covered early on and agreed in the kick-off meeting.
The club is free for all to join, giving anyone who wants it the ability to participate in any competitive event that they wish without needing to pay club dues annually. Which works really well for people here who largely race only once in a while... it helps support the club purpose, to help promote and make cycle sports accessible by removing a barrier (the formality of joining a club, paying dues, etc) and reflects well the highly independent cyclists who are on this forum.
The club does have some raw costs, but the point is to make them as low as possible. We have a domain name, affiliation fees, accountancy fees, bank charges, filing fees for some HMRC and Companies House things... in total it is anticipated that the fees are just North of £1k per year, and hopefully always less than £1.5k.
We cannot seek sponsorship, or rather we prefer not to. As it has knock-on effects. i.e. British Cycling do insure some events for non-sponsored clubs, and if we were sponsored we'd need to radically formalise how some events are done to obtain the necessary insurance, etc. Additionally affiliation fees are higher, and so on.
So... a non-sponsored club of largely independent cyclists without an overly formal structure.
The only question: How to fund it?
The answer that is most apparent: From club kit and merchandise.
Right now club jerseys are the way we hope to achieve most of that, then caps. Those are the bread and butter... but if we are in trouble we can resort to T-shirts too.
It would make little difference though: If we said the jersey was £60 and membership £10, you'd still pay £70... but at least this path means that those cannot afford to pay anything can turn up to an event in black kit and just ride and say they're part of LFGSS CC, not having paid anything and I'm cool with that.
Velocio-
Can anyone really not afford £10 to join a cycle club? That's got to be just about the cheapest membership fee for any sport. My old canoe club was £170 a year, gym membership is £50+ a month, golf club membership £hundreds. Anyone who wants to race is going to have to face the cost of entry fees and BC membership. £10 from 150 members and your funding is sorted, and you can offer whatever jerseys you like at cost to your members.
umop3pisdn
What was the reason for jersey sales funding the club? Why not £10 joining fee? People are always going to be happier paying a joining fee and a tenner less for their kit, behavioural economics innit. Gives you a source of annual income, people aren't going to buy a new jersey every year.