Dealing with Club Growth

So, one of the things that struck me out of our panel on Saturday was the number of clubs out there dealing with the issues of fantastic growth. Going from 10 to 50 members, etc. Let’s talk about what sort of challenges that clubs will face

There are a number of issues with this that I can think of:

  1. Meeting places - where to meet now that you have that many more folks
  2. Dues - collecting them?
  3. Structuring - how organized, how loose?
  4. liability
  5. The whole “brewers” vs. “drinkers” debate.

In the Falcons we’ve dealt with #5 for a long time and for a while some folks wanted to have a way to require that you be a brewer to be a member. For us though we have a number of older members who are active, helpful and awesome and who just don’t have the time for brewing. To us it didn’t seem fair or very warm and friendly to tell them to get grab a kettle or go take a hike. Ultimately that got incorporated into our newest bylaws (Maltose Falcons Bylaws) and the purpose statement of the club:

The purpose of the MALTOSE FALCONS HOME BREWING SOCIETY shall be to encourage all members:
To mature as brewers and beer enthusiasts;
To promote the dissemination of knowledge in the art of brewing;
To encourage and reward individuals dedicated to the brewing arts;
To educate the beer connoisseur in identifying the components of beers;
To foster the responsible use of the products of our craft; and
To celebrate the fruits of our labors.

i have been struggling with joining a club for growth reasons. there are two in my area. one has grown very quickly and on their website they talk about the number of members. to me it is already to big and busy.  good for them but i like smaller crowds. one of the others i emailed - club closed to new members.  growing pains abound

You can always start your own . . . find a couple of brewers you like and just start meeting.  You’re a club.

Register on the AHA site too though, it can help people find you.

i have thought about that. especially as i have found a good 8-10 people in my area that are not members of any club.  of course, some live in the neihborhood and it is easy to just get together and bs.

Don’t laugh, but that’s a pretty good foundation on which to build the basics. Naturally over time, if you want the organization to become self-sustaining there’ll need to be both growth and incorporation of new members into the group. Otherwise things will just die off whenever you grow bored or enough of your neighborhood members do.

Also, as you define your club’s culture think long and hard about not setting it up as in opposition to the larger club.

Sounds like you already have a club then.  They don’t all have to have a formal agenda, one of my clubs is just 6-12 of us meeting at a brewery every month and sharing beers.  No dues, no bylaws, no officers, and events are typically limited to an email saying “I’m brewing if anyone wants to come help”.

I’ve been living this topic for at least 3 years now. We went from around 20 to 60 in about a year and a half. First, realize that most of the people that were around for a couple years before the explosive growth are probably going to be most affected and put off by the growth while most of the new people will feel at home with more new people.

My advice is to accept that growth is inevitable and account for it ahead of time. I realize some clubs want to be as “Papazian” as possible and not worry about structure or bylaws but I promise you that it’s easier to put it all in place before growth starts or gets out of hand.

When growth is due primarily to local, active, participating members (i.e. people that want to show up to meetings), I think there are two primary paths to take. 1) Select a meeting location to stick with and size the club based on the space available. 2) Grow organically and select meeting locations as necessary.

This doesn’t address the pros and cons of smaller or larger clubs at all. It’s just that you can’t commit to a restrictive meeting location AND have no growth plan in place at the same time. Sardines don’t make happy members.

When we finally realized that we had 60 members, no growth strategy, no room left and no accepted form of decision making/conflict resolution, we had a near meltdown. People who wanted to affect change were frustrated. The president at the time suggested we form a steering committee to spread out some of the work of the officers and the first goal was to draft bylaws.

I can post more about our bylaws on the other thread, but here are the highlights of our current structure:

President, Treasurer, Secretary are the three officers. Additional steering members are the most recent ex-president and two additional elected representatives. Any suggestions or grievances get made to the committee and they first have a shot at solving it with full consensus. If consensus cannot be reached, it goes to a full club vote. It’s sort of democratic in a way, but some faith is put on elected officials to keep petty crap from clogging the meeting.

We don’t accept beer tourists into the club. We’ve decided through majority vote that we like our smaller meeting location (a brew pub) and therefore must cap membership. The club is focused on homebrewing so you have to a be a homebrewer to join. Of course, we probably wouldn’t be this restrictive if we had room for more people.

Bobby

I’m not much of a “joiner”. Can I form my own club and be the only member? 8)

If it works for you euge, if works for me.  You’re a club now. :slight_smile:

I’d rather be a corporation but a club will do for now. ::slight_smile:

Yes, but conversations will be a little onesided :wink:

As a one man wolf pack, there’ll be no one there to second any motion you bring to the floor.
I’ll volunteer to second anything you got…
Just PM me & I’ll enthusiastically PM back “2nd”.

Motion carried.

While one option is to start a new club - another option is to go to a meeting or event as a guest.  Most clubs have a provision for new people to come to 1-2 meetings before needing to join.  This way - you can get a feel for the club, how many people REALLY attend meetings and the ‘personality’ of the club.  You may find that you like a lot of the events the club does - even if you aren’t a monthly meeting type of person.

We also have people in our club who are members of another club, and their more informal group of 6-ish.  Having multiple options can give you the type of activities you prefer.  I’d just encourage you to go beyond the ‘numbers’.  You may have done this already - but it doesn’t hurt to check them out beyond their website.

Our club exploded in growth a few years ago. We’re now one of the largest clubs in the country.
I can’t speak on what happened during the rapid growth period since I wasn’t on the board at the time. The current board inherited this homebrewing machine.

Here’s what I can tell you.

  1. If you aren’t growing, you’re dying. Every aspect of the homebrewing hobby is growing. Craft beer is growing. You merely have to exist to grow. If you’re not, you might be headed for trouble. Another club in our area has been shrinking; losing brewers; struggling to do the things they used to love to do.

  2. Know the limits of your growth. There is a size your club can grow to where you can still meet in people’s homes. It’s different for each club. You may be able to meet at a business , bar, brewery or restaurant. Once you have 100 people coming consistently to your meetings, things begin to be uncomfortable in those types of environments. Homes become too small, you become too dependent on one business. Insurance and liability become an issue. Your state DLLC (or ABC) starts to become interested. We’re beyond this point as a club, we have to rent space to meet. Once this happens several things change.

a) You will most certainly want insurance if you don’t already have it. We have a policy for our club with liquor liability. It wasn’t easy to come by, but it has to be done once you get large.

b) At some point, growing your club through dues alone will not be sustainable. You will have to raise money through raffles, merchandise, events and flat out begging industry businesses. Revenues gained where homebrew is given away are fairly risky. It only takes one agent to decide it’s against the law. A couple of things that help us are selling overall and event sponsorship to breweries, having a business give a percentage of our business back to the club and raffles. Begin to raise funds that are not dependent on your dues.

c) Recognize that you are as large as many industry businesses like homebrew stores, breweries, bars. As a member, your group is a club and it should have a club feel. As a board member, you need to look at it as a business or at the very least a well run non-profit. Don’t run the club with a hobby mentality. It’s a subtle mindset thing, but I assure you, it changes your focus.

  1. If you have a Brewer’s Guild in your state, see if you can join it. If there isn’t one, start one. As a club that is growing, your club has significant value to the craft beer industry. Don’t be afraid to market your selves to them. I’m sure you’re already getting things like glassware, shirts, etc from places. Ask them what they’d like to see in return. Find out if they’d be willing to offer more. Glassware is a nice raffle item, but maybe the brewery is willing to offer more for formal recognition by the club. Position your club as a group of opinion-makers in your local beer scene. Encourage your members to let businesses know that they are from your club. Formalize discount programs and provide recognition for businesses that participate.

  2. Even though we are one large club, we have several informal clubs within that club. Recognize those groups and work with the leaders of those groups to work on projects. Sub-groups occur in even the smallest clubs, so don’t think that this is a large club only trait.

  3. Look for ways to incorporate growth into your by-laws. We recently put in a clause that allow the board to expand when membership expands and contracts if membership declines. If you are going to grow or limit growth tie those to certain conditions (i.e. So long as we are able to meet at x business, our maximum growth will be y).

That’s off the top of my head this AM. More to come.

We’re among those dealing with rapid growth and a change from “what it used to be”. Thought we could just manage it through sponsorship and quarterly membership acceptance dates, but starting to realize it’s not going to work. Don’t want to move from our excellent meeting place that we will outgrow so I’m seriously considering suggesting capping membership.
But until then, has anyone ever dealt with turning down someone wanting to join? Our recent monthly meeting gave me pause when one of our members brought some friends who just don’t seem to be a good fit. If first impressions are right, any experience on saying “we don’t want you”?
Thanks for starting this, Drew. I got a lot from the NHC session.

Brandt, our club just recently hit our cap for the year, as determined by the steering committee. It’s a fact that we have to turn new people away for the rest of the year or until we realize some members on the books don’t plan to return. As a part of the planning for actually capping membership, we implemented an application review so that we could weed out the “tourists”. Afterall, when there are limited seats, we wanted homebrewers to fill them. That isn’t to say a club can’t have a mix of brewers and beer enthusiasts but when push came to shove, we wanted to be a homebrewing club and not a beer club.

You may not have the luxury of time or resources to do this, but we’ve alleviated some the “beer drinker” problem in a couple of ways.
We really try and push beer education. We encourage them to be BJCP and/or Cicerone trained. At meetings, I’ll generally press the non-brewers into service first with the setup and tear down/clean up. It used to be we had perhaps 100 brewers and 400 drinkers/Oktoberfest attendees. A recent survey tells us that we now have 350 brewers.

We’ve also began a series of happy hour meet ups at bars and breweries which give people the opportunity to get their drink on outside of the general/business meeting and out side of our rental space. Our membership provides discounts (azhomebrewers.org/benefits) so we may have a portion of our members just buying memberships for the discount. The net for those people is they gave us money for one of our sponsors/partners to give them a discount. I don’t think its an issue yet.

I’ll have to say - using a “night out” setup is probably a good thing for controlling the drinker’s population. Another local club here - Pacific Gravity does that. I’d love to do it with the Falcons too.

(long question here - new topic though)

The non-brewing members often can be great volunteers to help at events and meetings.  They will learn and become evangelists for the hobby - even if they don’t brew (yet).

Also - I’d be really careful about screening out members because they don’t feel like a fit.  First impressions can be wrong.  In many cases, once I’ve gotten to know someone better, I can better appreciate what they bring to the club.  If they really aren’t a fit, they will likely drop out over time.  If they end up being a problem - clauses in by-laws or a code of conduct can help you deal with that (usually - things that put the club at liability risk).  And - restricting membership this way can get you a reputation as elitist - even among members you may have wanted to join.  It’s really hard to shed this type of label once you have it.

Even if you’re a loner, the advantage of being in a club is that you can get ideas from other folks. Also, it’s a good place to get rid of beer if you have too much!

As for club size, I think that olllllo pretty much nailed it. The leadership has to plan for growth or limit growth. Planning for growth has its own problems. Limiting growth can be problematic in that you turn away potentially great people and acquire a reputation for snobbishness. Also, what do you do with current members who temporarily turn into “dead weight” (i.e., stop brewing, don’t come to meetings)?

From HB clubs in my region, I’ve see the following structures:

  1. Small and informal - 5-10 people, usually friends, who informally meet, usually in someone’s house. No real officers, no dues, no formal club functions.

  2. Semi-Organized - 10-30 people, maybe not so tightly linked, who meet informally at a restaurant or bar. Might have officers, by-laws and membership dues. Might sponsor club events.

  3. Small Organized - 30-100 people, usually with formal officers, by-laws, dues and so forth. Might be big enough to run an annual HB competition and hold similar club-sponsored events. At this level, there are some logistical strains and the possibility that new members are either not welcome, or feel ignored.

  4. Big Organized - 100+ people, as above, but more organized and possibly more formal. At this level, budgets and logistical issues get big enough that the club starts straining unless it’s got a very talented cadre of leaders and support people who want to make the club work. At this level, even finding a suitable venue for club meetings can be a hassle, and visitors and new members can feel excluded.