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 Swastakowey wrote:
Come up with a committee and change that committee once a year or once every six months... its a hard job.

I can't second this enough. If you are dealing with a volunteer organization you need to rotate out volunteers fairly often or people will get burned out. Say, for example, you have 9 people volunteering to be organizers, it is far better to have them in three groups that rotate out admin responsibilities every few months or so than to have them all working at once.

It can be tough to keep a volunteer organization going, but rotation helps out a whole lot. It is so much easier to perform admin responsibilities after 6 months of not having to worry about it and knowing you are only committed until the end of the year.

Interestingly enough we are talking about this in our latest episode which releases this Sunday.

http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/?p=3409

We also have interviews of several game club organizers from around the world.

I'm going to contradict azreal here, double check the liability insurance of the venue!

In many cases the PLI only covers the hall, if a club uses the hall, the club is responsible for their own insurance. For example, a club member falls down some stairs at the venue, then the venue could be liable if the stairs are faulty. The same club member trips and falls over some terrain and hits their head against the wall, it's not the venues' fault this time, it's the clubs. Same with open days to attract new members, the liability is the clubs' not the venues. Affiliating with one of the 'main networks' may get you cheaper insurance.

Cheers

Andrew

Not contradicting me at all. The hall we rent specifically covers us while we're using it, other policies may not. My old man has been in insurance (including PL) for years, so I know a bit purely by osmosis, and not all policies are created equal, so it would absolutely be worth double checking.

 AndrewC wrote:
I'm going to contradict azreal here, double check the liability insurance of the venue!

In many cases the PLI only covers the hall, if a club uses the hall, the club is responsible for their own insurance. For example, a club member falls down some stairs at the venue, then the venue could be liable if the stairs are faulty. The same club member trips and falls over some terrain and hits their head against the wall, it's not the venues' fault this time, it's the clubs. Same with open days to attract new members, the liability is the clubs' not the venues. Affiliating with one of the 'main networks' may get you cheaper insurance.

Cheers

Andrew

Ewww...insurance. Annoying to get for things that don't have robust actuarial tables. "Wait, what kind of event is it..."

Just curious, where abouts are you?

Alan, I'm in Aberdeen.

As for the insurance stuff, I'll certainly look into it.

What seems to be a main reason my local club does well is that it has a lively forum.
We have a thread open for each week, and people post their game choices for that session. If anyone wants to join them, done. If not, they know ahead of time.
The forum also has sections for the local stores, and they can post their details, and any offers or events. In return, they point people at the forum, and whence to the club...

Ours is in a church hall.
We get sidelined occasionally, for a festival or booked event, but that's maybe 1-2 times a year. It's cheap, but if the week's minimal takings exceed the rent, any excess past a buffer goes on scenery.
If yours is run by the council, they might be able to post the clubs details around their intranet or similar, and get people put your way.

And, use things like Dakka to get the word out, too. When you're running, trawl the intros and 'find a game' sections of Dakka, and steer them to you. Don't get greedy and poach, but once you get going, you'll have info to feed to anyone new to the area.

Good luck.