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How To Promote
Your Club In The Community
By Steve and Cindy Taylor
Your bass fishing club can
grow and raise its profile by reaching out to others. Here’s how
to make your club an integral part of your community.
Your bass fishing club is an
important part of your life, providing fellowship, fun, and
competition. But membership can become a richer experience when
you take advantage of opportunities to raise the profile of your
club, build solid relationships with businesses and
organizations, improve local fishing, and deepen ties to your
community. Here’s our guide to turning your fishing club into an
even more meaningful part of the world around you.
Branded!
Just like a football team or corporation, your club deserves a
logo to establish it as a brand. If you’re blessed with artistic
members, ask them to draft a few designs, or work with the staff
at print shops or copy stores. A simple logo that’s easily
recognized trumps fancy details or a rainbow of colors. Even one
or two distinctive colors and the club’s name in a bold,
easy-to-read typeface are effective.
When the logo’s done, order
letterhead (many businesses won’t donate items for fund-raisers
without a request on letterhead) and business cards with the
club’s name, logo, Web site, physical mailing address, and an
e-mail address or phone number on them. Every member should have
a few in his wallet, ready to hand to potential new members.
Caps, T-shirts, and other logo gear is popular; sell it for a
small profit so you can give away a few items at raffles and
tournaments, and encourage members to wear the logo proudly.
Share your knowledge
A speaker exchange program with other organizations adds variety
to your meetings at no cost. Members of canoe clubs, fly-fishing
groups, a catfishing club, or even the local Chamber of Commerce
can present entertaining and educational slide shows or
seminars, and your best storytellers can spend an evening with
them, evangelizing bass fishing and your organization.
Everyone benefits from learning
something new, and all the clubs involved may get a new member
or two if you view one another as partners rather than
competitors. When you have a great organization with
knowledgeable members, show it off!
Clean the scene
If no one has yet organized an annual cleanup event for your
home waters, there’s no better first service project for a bass
club. These projects typically start small with a few buddies
and a box of trash bags. But with a little attention from the
media and an enthusiastic club, they can snowball into
full-scale, annual events with sponsors providing T-shirts and
food for volunteers, and your favorite river or lake will
look—and fish—much better without all the garbage.
Instead of re-inventing the
wheel, find out who’s in charge of a similar event and ask for
advice on kick-starting your own clean-up effort. State and
federal agencies devoted to conservation, fish and wildlife, or
the environment may also contribute guidance or grants.
Going Public
Open fund-raising events to the public and encourage members to
invite family and friends from outside the club. The congenial
atmosphere at any bass club’s fish fries, barbecues, or raffles
are perfect for showing folks that your members know how to have
fun.
If you hold member swap
shops—where everyone convenes to buy, sell, or trade fishing
tackle—make up flyers and invite others to join in. We know you
don’t want to turn your manly gear swap into a ladies’ bazaar,
but your members will do more business if you negotiate with a
church or school for space and invite their communities to bring
non-fishing items, too. The more people who know about your
club, the better.
Make way for merchants
Your club represents potential customers to many businesses that
will gladly market their products and services to your group,
and, perhaps, donate products or gift certificates for your
fund-raisers. These two-way relationships make clubs and their
business partners stronger and more visible.
Focus most of your effort to
build bridges between the club and businesses that cater to bass
anglers, but also look beyond them. Your members are more than
fishermen—they also buy hardware, clothing, entertainment,
repair work, motel rooms, and gifts for their families.
If your club has an official Web
site, set up a page for links to friends of the club, including
businesses that help you raise funds. While most newsletters
don’t have enough circulation to warrant paid advertising, you
can swap ads for donations or encourage fishing guides or bait
shop owners to write fishing reports or columns—and use a bit of
space to mention their latest gear or a big sale. The work of
such retail writers can also liven up your Web site, too.
Service Projects
The most powerful way to earn respect and build a sterling
reputation is to initiate or participate in service projects.
Ideas for projects that will serve both the club and your
community are limitless.
In our home state, bass fishing
clubs frequently lend a hand to the Arkansas Game and Fish
Commission. For example, club members have loaded the livewells
of their bass boats with largemouth fingerlings to help
fisheries biologists distribute fish throughout the Arkansas
River and to remote areas of vast Corps of Engineers lakes,
where their survival rates are better.
Fish habitat improvement projects
on lakes of all sizes are popular, with clubs pitching in to
build and sink artificial structure that attracts bass, crappie,
and other gamefish. Arkansas’s Stream Teams, which improve
habitat, shore up eroding banks, and monitor water quality and
fish populations on moving waters, often include bass club
members. And the agencies that operate parks, campgrounds,
docks, ramps, and handicapped-accessible fishing platforms
always need help with maintenance and appreciate fishermen who
can swing hammers as well as they feather a baitcasting reel.
Closer to home, do what you do
best, but make a project of it--take someone fishing. Help your
state conservation agency with a fishing derby to teach kids how
to fish, take disabled veterans or shut-ins to a local pond, or
plan a bass-fishing seminar and invite the whole town.
We could go on and on with
examples, but here’s the point: There’s a lifetime’s worth of
good work waiting for every bass club out there. Volunteer
laborers are especially valuable to state and federal agencies
because the cash value of their work often increases the amount
of matching grant money they can obtain, and such agencies
always have a backlog of projects that benefit fish and
fishermen. In addition to recognition and thanks from the
surrounding community, your club’s members will enjoy the
satisfaction of a job well done—and better fishing.
Make Media Friends
When your group pulls together for a project or accomplishes a
newsworthy goal, share the good news with editors, writers, and
broadcasters. They’re always looking for interesting stories and
reliable information, and when you make their jobs easy, clubs
of any size can break into print or the airwaves.
If the newspaper that serves your
area lists meetings or has a local events calendar, call the
editor to add your club’s meetings, tournaments, and special
events. A friendly sit-down with the local sports editor might
yield a feature story about the club or regular coverage of your
tournaments—especially when you deliver the results in a format
he or she finds easy to use.
If area publications lack
outdoors coverage, offer articles or fishing reports from the
club’s best writer. And if you have a good talker in the group
(and what bass club doesn’t?), set him up for an interview on a
radio talk show or have him describe your latest service project
for a TV reporter.
Photographs are another way to promote your club in the media.
Most outlets now refuse photos of dead, bloody fish unless
you’ve caught a state or world record, but you’ll interest them
with images of happy kids with lively fish or an angler casting
against a dramatic sunset. Digital video now makes it easy to
post moving or still images that capture the excitement of your
tournaments on your Web site, too. Watch for photo opportunities
during tournaments and outings—and make sure that handsome, new,
club logo shows up somewhere in the picture!
Bringing it all together
All of these ideas take time, patience, hard work, and a lot of
smiles and handshakes to keep a club growing and moving forward.
But with the right effort and enthusiasm, your club will become
a source of local pride for every member—and everyone else in
your community, too.
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