New clubs and how to affiliate your club with the BMC

Whether you have an established club ready to register to the BMC; have questions about what registration may mean to you, your club, and its’ members; or would like to set up a club but are not sure where to start, this is the right place for you!

If you are looking for help in setting up a new climbing, hill walking or mountaineering club, please read on.

Setting up a new club

Mountaineering, climbing and hill walking clubs come in all shapes and sizes, from 15 members to 1500+ members, to those offering hill walking only to those offering multiple mountaineering activities, and to clubs focusing only on under 18’s, only on adults and for all ages.  Some clubs own or manage facilities such as mountain huts / bunkhouses or climbing walls.  Some clubs are part of a larger organisation, such as a school, climbing wall or youth centre.  Some will meet several times a week  whereas others may only meet once a month.

Whatever your club looks like, or you want it to look like, it is important that it is designed to work for you, those who are going to help you run it and for your members.

Key considerations:

The activities

Be specific about exactly what you want the club to provide – do you want it focusing on family activities, or hill walking, or introducing people to outdoor climbing, or training for competition climbing?  Are you looking for the club to be providing activity a few times a week or once-a-month?  Where will you be meeting, and will it be the same place each time?  Will it be the same all year around, or will the activities be seasonal, will they align to the academic year?

The structure

Clubs come in a variety of guises when it comes to their formal structure.  Many mountaineering clubs, indeed many sports clubs, are unincorporated associations run by volunteers on a committee or management group that is often elected by the club members.  But there are many different structures available and there isn’t one that is the “best” for everyone as that is determined by the individual circumstances of each club.  Be aware that the structure you choose may impact on the type of BMC registration you can apply for, on the type of funding that you may wish to apply for in future from external organisations such as Sport England or Sport Wales, and on the type of bank accounts available to the club.  There is more information about club structures here.

The people

Identify the types of roles you need to run your club, and then recruit people to match the roles.  Key roles that are likely to be needed include a treasurer/finance officer, secretary/administrator, meets/activity organiser, membership officer, safeguarding contact / officer.  You may also need to have instructors or coaches, someone to look after club kit/equipment, communications guru and a chair and/or president.  Some people, particularly initially, may take on more than one role while you continue to recruit people.  If the role is too large, or people don’t have the time to fully commit to a role, then you may wish to “role-share” or have a lead person and a deputy.

You may need to recruit some of these people sooner than others – for example, you may need some to help you to set up the club whereas other roles will be more focused on running the club and delivering club activities once it is set up.

The BMC offers training support to the wider workforce within clubs, some of this training is only available or is discounted for members of registered clubs.  Training is available in safeguarding (children and adults), supporting those who are training novice members, courses for committee members, and more.

The future

Although you may have only just started setting up your club it is never too early to look towards the future and put things in place now to help as your club develops and grows.  Think about what you want the club to be like in 2 years… in 5 years… in 10 years.

“Club growth” means different things for different clubs, and it doesn’t always mean growing in size.  For some clubs it may be more members, but for others it may mean more volunteers, improved training for the workforce, providing opportunities for members to develop their skills (for example, hill walkers experiencing scrambling or winter walking, learning to lead climb, indoor climbers experiencing outdoor climbing), supporting members to achieve their goals (such as, completing the Welsh 3’s, ticking off all the Classic Rock climbs, selection on to the competition climbing talent pathway)

Some clubs will grow in size slowly, some will grow very fast – it is important that when you are setting up your club that you know what the capacity is and what will need to happen for you to grow your membership size, such as recruiting more volunteers, training more people up to deliver sessions, getting more kit/equipment etc.  Any speed of growth has to be managed by you, and if the club starts to grow at too fast a rate you will need to have systems in place to pause recruitment.

Further help

Some of these options may help you as you set up your club:

• Register your interest in setting up a club with the BMC [link]

• Check out the BMC Club Support Pack with lots of information for climbing, hill walking and mountaineering clubs.

• Read about BMC Club Registration.

• Sport England has a fantastic resource to support club leaders, managers, and committee members whether the club is little more than an idea you wish to turn in to reality or has been established for decades. Go to Buddle to check out what is available for you.  If you are based in Wales you may wish to check out the support that Sport Wales has for clubs.

• Get in touch with us here [link to contact form]