How Should you approach your next recruitment season?
The recruitment process is your clubs biggest opportunity each year. It’s an opportunity for growth, for investment, for identification of volunteers – it’s everything. It is the setup for your season in every way.
An effective recruitment period will be well planned and delegated. A recruitment ‘committee’ with each person responsible for a specific and independent function. Any shared tasks are completed early and together where possible, with review points throughout the delivery of your recruitment process.
This article is intended to step through the Recruitment process, including ensuring your club has a basic digital presence, how best to approach planning, what strategies you can implement (including School Clinics), leading into Conversion Events (Come and Try days, galas, scrimmage games and pre-season trainings) as well as ensuring that you’re best positioned to convert registrations.
Want Even more Reading? Start with the 2023/24 Summer Recruitment Review
Start by Evaluating your Clubs Digital Presence
What does that even mean?
The world is continually becoming more technology centered. In fact, in 2021, there was an average of 20.5 internet-connected devices per household in Australia – with forecasts indicating that number could reach 33.8 by 2025. [Source]
Your club should be digitally accessible. This means that a new member can gather all the details they need to make an informed decision within a few clicks.
Website
Your website is a funnel – 20% of members in SEQ for the 2023/24 season found Baseball through Social Media and Search Engines – you want to be able to capture that 20%. You don’t need anything fancy for your website but it does need to be easy to read and easy to use.
There’s a number of resources available for you to review when setting up your Club’s website. The Communications Planner and Websites pages on Club Hub have content breakdowns and the Checklist allows you to make adjustments to your existing website – or form a basis for development of a new one.
Other
Can your committee easily and readily share information as needed? Can any committee member find answers to questions they receive?
Look to acquire a Not-for-Profit license to Office365 or Google Workspace to provide your club with email addresses (you can use your domain! e.g. email@domain.com.au) and online file storage.
Ensure your pages are up-to-date with the appropriate contact details and link direct to the registration information page of your website.
If you have any passionate videographers or media students, consider asking them to setup a TikTok page and create content for the club. This helps them build a portfolio, and your club to build an online presence.
The Initial Plan
The main goal with your initial plan is defining a timeline and a budget. The rest can be filled in as you progress.
This is where you identify your team and allocate responsibilities or define areas each volunteer is interested in assisting with.
Recruitment Strategies
This is the key section.
The strategies that you utilise will define how wide your reach (how many people see your advertising) and what age groups you’ll see attending your Come and Try days.
Digital Strategies
Sending Emails – Existing Members
Game Day is your database and you’ve got hundreds of contacts. Utilise your existing member base as your first point of contact when setting up for a new season.
Initial email allows you to do one of two things: Offer Early Bird Registration Discounts and seek Volunteers to assist with recruitment activities. You may even offer discounted fees based on volunteering.
Investigate doing a Newsletter – you decide the frequency – but the goal is keeping your members in the loop on projects and activities around the club, building a sense of community and inclusion. Demonstrate changes and feedback that’s been taken on board.
Satisfied members will increase your membership through word of mouth too, so don’t leave them out.
Responding to Emails – New Members
Ensure that you have someone responding to emails!! The contact details included with recruitment information should be someone responsive. Not everyone will contact you via phone call.
Provide relevant information and invite them to attend pre-season events.
Check that your Website is Up-to-date
Make sure that your website is up-to-date with the next season’s information – updated fees, any changes to age groups, game times, etc.
Update the Banner on your Home Page to display upcoming Come and Try days or advertise that registrations for the next season are now open. Link to your Registrations Information page.
Social Media
Ensure your pages are up-to-date with the appropriate contact details and link direct to the registration information page of your website.
If you have any passionate videographers or media students, consider asking them to setup a TikTok page and create content for the club. This helps them build a portfolio, and your club to build an online presence.
PAID Advertising. It works, trust me.
Pine Hills dropped approximately $500 into the below ad and it paid off. Pine Hills expanded to 15 teams across T-Ball, Rookie Ball and Little Leagues Division 1-3 this year.
The Pine Hills ad works especially well because it’s simple, eye catching and presents the most important information in the image, backed up by a bit more of a text based description.
You don’t have to drop $500, you can still run a decently effective campaign with 1/5th ($100).
Traditional Media
This is still an advertising method!
Build contacts and get feel-good stories written about successes within your club, a long-time volunteer, a junior with big dreams, or a player who dedicates their time to the community (RFS, SES, Emergency Services, etc.). Newspaper, Radio, TV, they’re all still options if you present a good enough story!
Take advantage of council-owned billboards at Community Centres or Public Spaces, Public Signage, Billboards, Community Notice Boards. (e.g. in your local Coles or supermarket, Community centres, PCYC)
Physical Strategies
School Engagement
Schools present a major opportunity for engagement:
- School Newsletters
- Accessing Schools Local Business Networks
- School Clinics
Baseball Queensland now has the School Ambassador Program, so reach out to gamedevelopment@baseballqld.asn.au to see if we’ve got contacts at a school near you.
Schools have newsletters and local networks that you may be able to take advantage of to get your message out to the community. Please be weary, some schools charge for space in their newsletters.
School Clinics are a surefire way of getting in front of potential members. Aim to target grades 1-4, as these translate well into your T-Ball, Rookie Ball age groups. You can push up to Year 6, which is Little League as well. High Schools typically result in much lower conversion rates but if an opportunity arises, take advantage of it!
Please check out the BQ School Clinics Doc linked under the photo. Each club is offered 5 days of BQ-staffed clinics each year, you organise the clinic and we’ll organise the staff.
Make sure to work with our Game Development Manager to ensure that we can staff your clinics. Historically clubs organise their clinics last minute and all for the same dates.
Community Engagement
Opportunities:
- Engaging local community groups, such as PCYCs
- Delivering programs with local PCYCs
- Building relationships with organisers of local markets, fairs, fetes and shopping centres
- Attend markets, fairs and fetes to get your name and brand out there, these can also be effective fundraising tools as well
- Building relationships with organisations interested in entering corporate teams
- Some organisations fully fund or subsidise their staff to play in community sport, so you may get a few players or an entire sponsored team.
- Partner with another local sports club (alternate season)
- Special offers for partner club players.
- Build relationships with local Universities or Tafe Campuses
- Offer discounted registrations for students
- Potential to look at a full team of students as well
The opportunities are truly endless, partnerships can develop into sponsorships if handled correctly.
Take Advantage of Council Opportunities
- Signage, billboards and community centres are great ways of getting (usually free) visibility
- Local politicians are great for advertising, but are also integral to develop relationships with (funding!)
Some councils offer programs or host events that your club can utilise to reach the local community.
Logan City Council run a KRANK program – which encourages community organisations to provide low-cost activities during school holidays.
Townsville City Council run a Get Active Sign On day each year where your club can setup a stall and advertise to residents looking for their next sporting club.
Conversion Events
All the progress and hard work can go out the window at this step. Converting to a paid registration has to be an extremely simple process. If you make people jump through too many hoops, they’ll simply stop jumping.
The Basics around Registrations
Accept online registrations as soon as you can. Once BA and BQ have locked in their fees, your club fees should be locked, loaded and ready to go.
Offer direct links to your registration form on at least:
- Your website (Registration Info page)
- Your social media (Pinned posts + QR code in your Cover Photo)
Do not require players to fill out EOI forms just to receive a link to your registration form. This really only applies when you’re running a program that’s outside of your normal registration products where you need to gauge interest to know if the program is proceeding.
Alternatively, EOI forms are useful if capitations have not yet been posted but you’d like to start preparing for the season.
Conversion Events
Now you might be asking why I keep referring to them as Conversion Events and not Come and Try days, and that’s because a Come and Try day is just one of your options.
The Tips:
- Run multiple events in the lead up to the season
- Try to run some events that target specific demographics
- g. T-Ball/Rookie Ball, Little League, Seniors, Womens and Masters
- Cater each event to the target demographic – you might have additional fun activities for the Juniors, or the bar open for the Seniors, Masters and Womens (a meet your teammates style get together and try out)
- Cover different timeslots where possible
- Some people are available weekends, some are best for weeknights – cater to everyone
Come and Try Days
These are the standard, and you can make them as luxurious or basic as you like.
Variety of options across different times and days and targeted participation opportunities for Womens, Masters and Juniors.
Aiming to make people feel as comfortable as possible. Use role models from those specific markets – Female Players at Womens Come and Try days, etc.
View the Come and Try Guide by clicking the button below.
Pre-Season Carnivals and Festivals
In 2023, Townsville ran a Baseball Festival which included fun games of T-Ball, Baseball5, Skills and Drills, Home Run Derby and a Movie on the Infield.
This is the perfect way of getting old and new members down, same place, low pressure with a fun social element.
Pre-Season Scrimmage and Trainings
You can only run Come and Try days for so long, luckily Social Media advertising can be extended as needed.
You can target specific age groups to fill those final spots on teams and have players attend pre-season scrimmage games and trainings.
Idea for scrimmage games: Baseball with a Buddy
New players partnered with experienced players to learn positions in a mock-game.
Summary
Baseball Queensland is available to assist you in your recruitment planning and processes.
Game Development Manager
gamedevelopment@baseballqld.asn.au
The Game Development Manager can assist in the organisation and staffing of School Clinics and running community based programs, such as partnerships with PCYC.
Club Support Coordinator
clubdevelopment@baseballqld.asn.au
Nick Wyllie, the Club Support Coordinator, is happy to be super involved. He is able to provide your club with adaptable Canva templates for Social Media, Posters and other Media uses. Guide you on establishing Social Media marketing, seeking website hosting and design and more. Reach out and see where and how he can assist you.