So You Want To Run A Fan Club?

by Simon Plumbe

A large number of sci-fi and fantasy fans have an urge to take their interest in a particular show or film further than just watching and buying merchandise. I am of course talking about those who are brave enough to take steps towards running a fan club. It's not an easy task though, so I thought you mind find these few pointers useful...

This only scratches the surface of what you will need to bear in mind and consider when running a club, but you may find it of some use anyway!

Getting Started

One of the first things to do is decide what your club will be about. Will you want to run a general sci-fi/fantasy club or will you want to focus on a specific TV show, movie or something similar. It will help if you can develop a clear picture of exactly what it is you want to achieve right from the start, and it will make finding helpers and members much easier.

Another thing to consider before you start your club are any local and national rivals that you might have. Instead of trying to compete with other clubs offering something similar, why not contact them and offer your help. Some aspects of SF fandom are not strong enough to support a lot of clubs, so this is something you should bear in mind.

Support Team

Once you've made the decision to go ahead with running a club, you need to get a few other people on board - you may think you can handle everything alone, but if your club is going to have any chance of being successful, then you will need the help of others. Talk to some of your close friends and see if they can spare an hour or two a week and if you are in a relationship, talk to your partner and make sure they are comfortable with you running a club. At times, it can eat into your social life and if your other half isn't prepared for it, you could have problems further down the line.

You won't necessarily need a lot of people involved in your club - just enough to spread the work around and make your life a lot easier. It's better to have a small team of people you can trust and keep in contact with on a regular basis than having 20 or 30 people all doing their own thing with no-one talking to each other.

Getting A Name

It may sound strange, but getting a good name for your club is pretty important. You want something that your members can remember easily and one that bears some relevance to what it is that your club is about. For own own Star Trek club, we chose the name Alpha Quadrant because is was launched at the same time as our convention, Delta Quadrant, and the whole Alpha Quadrant/Delta Quadrant terms were being used quite heavily in Star Trek at the time because of Star Trek: Voyager.

Membership Package

Once you have the basics out of the way, you have to decide what you are going to offer your members. Are you going to run regular meetings? Are you interested in more relaxed informal pub gatherings? Do you want to provide newsletters and glossy membership cards? All of this - and more - will help you determine the cost implications for running your club.

Budgeting

Once you have figured out what you are going to offer to all your members, you can start researching the cost breakdown. If you are going to send out newsletters, decide how many a year you are going to produce each year and what size they are going to be. You can then produce a one-off sample issue, get costs for photocopying, postage and stationery costs for the envelope and address label, and multiply that by the number of newsletters per year. This will give you a starting point with your cost planning.

After that, decide what sort of introductory package you will offer - will you offer a membership card, a welcome letter, or any other items? Again, you will need to cost all of these and get an estimated cost for postage. Add all of this together and you will have a basic cost for running your club per member per year.

Then you need to consider additional costs such as publicity, telephone costs, ink and paper for your printer for producing your newsletters etc. and build in a percentage for this to each membership fee. For example, if it costs you £4 a year for each member, charge £5 to give you a small safety net to cover unexpected costs.

Cost-Cutting

There will always be ways of making savings when running a club, but you should always try to be realistic when taking advantage of any cost-cutting opportunities that come along. For most clubs, at one point during the formative stages, you'll find yourself getting access to free photocopying, limited free stationery, and even free postage (and if you are lucky, all three). One thing I can't stress enough is that you should never be dependent on this.

When we were starting out with our Star Trek club, Alpha Quadrant, we made a few mistakes. We were offered a free source of photocopying, stationery and postage, and as such, we made the mistake of not charging for membership thinking that if we didn't have to pay, why should our members, relying on our meetings as our sole source of income.

Things got out of hand as the club grew from it's early stages to over 500 members and we found that we couldn't afford to do this and still have newsletters free so we had to cut back. As a result, people didn't get to learn of our activities so attendance figures dropped. It was a vicious circle and only now are we able to fight our way out of it thanks to our online presence.

Activities

Okay, so you know how much you'll be charging (if anything) so next you need to decide what you are going to do with your club. Will you hold regular meetings where fans can meet to chat and watch videos? Will you arrange trips out to the cinema, or will your social gatherings be limited to drinks down the local and gathering around someone's house to watch the latest episode of Buffy?!

Whatever you decide to do, you have to make sure that your activities are well within your capabilities and means. There is no point trying to over-stretch yourself early on and if that means holding your first few meetings at someone's house, it will help to establish yourself without any risk.

Newsletters

Something you might want to think about is whether or not you want to produce a regular newsletter for your members. Some people will love to receive regular mailings from a club and it certainly helps your members feel a part of what is going on, but without contributions they can be difficult to put together. Not to mention the printing and distribution costs...!

For Alpha Quadrant, we produced newsletters every two months and these not only had news and information on the club, but artwork, articles, features, news and much more. We wanted to offer our members a mini-magazine every time to keep people interested in what we were doing as a club. It worked quite well and we found that a lot of our members wanted to get involved as a result.

Having A Website

In this day and age, having a web site is an important aspect of any club or organisation, but you must make sure that you have someone who can not only design your site for you, but keep it up-to-date. No website is better than having a site that is never updated or has very little in terms of content, but I'd generally give this a low priority, especially if you are planning on running a club on a more local level.

Once you can get online, a simple site promoting your club and it's activities will generally suffice. Tell people who you are, where you meet, what membership entails and what people will receive on joining and give them an opportunity to get in touch. Anything else is an added bonus!

Publicity

One thing that no club can survive without is publicity. To start off with, you will be okay letting people know about your club through word of mouth, but sooner or later, you'll find that your entire circle of friends knows about it and that all of them who want to join have done so. You will then have to decide what sort of publicity you want to do for your club, and what sort of budget you can afford to spend on promoting yourself.

Whether this means promoting your club on websites, through sci-fi/fantasy magazines, or through leaflets being distributed at local stores and conventions, you have to make sure that you target your publicity as best as you can so the people who are like to join are the ones who will see your leaflets and information.

There will also be plenty of opportunities to work with other clubs and organisations so why not discuss an exchange of leaflets so you will promote each other in your next mailings. It's fairly cost effective, and again you are targetting sci-fi fans specifically.

Office Equipment

In the long term, if your club is successful, you may find it useful to own a number of small office items such as a shredder or laminator. They are not too inexpensive, but try to buy these only if you can afford it from excess funds. Having access to a laminator will allow you to produce high quality membership cards at little cost, but to your members, they still look great!

Well, I hope this has given you a few ideas and if you want any more tips or advice, please feel free to get in touch. Once your club is up and running, let us know and we'll list it on the site as well!