Gareth Brookes
Gareth Brookes, Midlands Regional Development Officer. email

Club Development

Top Ten Tips

Press tips for clubs. A succinct guide to promoting your Club through the media.

A full official RYA PR Toolkit, outlining everything you could need about the best ways to maximise positive publicity for your Club, Centre or organisation can be obtained from Emma Slater in the RYA Communications team.

Instructor Conference

Slides from the East Midlands Instructor Conference held at Rutland SC on February 27th are available here.

Guide to writing a Club Development Plan (Gareth Brookes)

A major part of my role is supporting clubs with their development. Whilst I may have ideas about how a club could move forward - it is very much up to the clubs own committee and membership what direction they move in, and how fast they do this.

To help a club decide where it wants to go and how it is going to get there it needs a plan - a club development plan. Despite sounding like an onerous task the club development plan is simply three questions – and three answers.

The third question is normally the tricky one. This is where I may be able to help as I see lots of different clubs trying different ideas – so hopefully I can find one that will suit you. The entire document should be no more than three sides of A4 with bullet points rather than lengthy text.

I have no doubt that a club with a plan is more likely to be successful, and that those without a plan often start to struggle. So, the question is have you got a club development plan? Don’t forget if you have one it should really be a fixed agenda item for the committee meetings to ensure that it is used and reviewed.

If you want to start to write a club development plan then please get in touch with me at gareth.brookes@rya.org.uk or 07876 330136. I will be able to chat through the options and send you an RYA Guide to Club Development and an example plan to get you started. Once you have started on this I can come and meet you to help you with the plan and then to review it when required.