Starting Dive Club

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Scuba T

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Location
Bentonville, Arkansas
Hi gang,

I would love to get some input from the group regarding Dive clubs. We do not currently have one in my area and I am interested in getting one started. I would appreciate feedback from anyone who has started one themselves and how they went about doing it, did they get a local LDS to sponsor ect., or from people who belong to dive clubs and what they like about their club what activities they do, dive events, speakers, club benefits fees ect. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

T
 
Diving clubs.

There are two ways to start. However, it depends on what you want. If you want minimum responsibility, get attached to a store, or if you want maximum independence go it alone.

Going it alone
The best thing to do is to start with a group of friends that are divers, and then slowly build it up. Don't try and start by offering classes etc.., but concentrate on getting people diving.

Good ideas to start with are Barbeques etc... for getting together, and then when you have enough people you then need a meeting location etc.. most community recreation centres can help.... a more common meeting place for UK diving clubs is a local pub!

To start with, if you have a group of say 10 people, it is very easy just to get a few together for a w/end diving. As you grow you can then start by forming a propper club. A good idea is to write a constitution, and actually have in writing what posts you are going to have in the club, who is responsible for that etc.. However, make sure that once you have done this, every time an official decision is made, make sure it is written down!

Once you have that you can then go to a local bank and start a club bank account - these are generally special ones requiring two signatures etc.. and can usually be put in a name like 'The Chairman, Nudi-branch bive club''. Certainly UK banks do that, and I am sure that US ones will to. It is a very good idea to have a bank account, simply because you then don't have money floating about, also, members can see bank statements etc.. so they know what is going on.

After you have done that, you then want to start thinking about other things, eg a small boat to go diving off - have a good read of http://www.divernet.co.uk/clubs/grants1198.htm . In the UK almost every dive club has 2 or more RIB's - Zodiac type boats with rigid glass fibre hulls- they cost about £12K (about 20k$) There are a number of ways of raising this - charging decent membership fees (typically in the UK it can cost as much as £150 a year -$240) with 30 members you can buy a boat after 3 years. Or, you can fundraise, OR you can apply for the 1001 different government community sports grants. Certainly UK diving clubs have considerable success in getting government and lottery money. However, for this type of government money you need things like financial records to show that the club is active and actually exists!

The last thing to think about is training. Once you are established you can look for a pool, and an instructor.

One big word of caution is to avoid at all costs dive store involvment untill you are well set up. The problem with store involvment is that you will not be independant of the store. The store will almost certainly insist that you go on store trips etc.. Keeping it independant, you can organise whatever you want whenever you want - it doesn't take that much effort to phone somewhere, book diving, and accomodation for a w/end! Clubs like this grow by word of mouth, adverts at the local swimming pool etcetera...

To go it alone, you do need to find an experienced diver to keep an eye on what is going on, unless you only intend to dive with professional outfits!

Who does what

The typical UK dive club has 4 or 5 key people, however, to begin with you need 2 or 3

Diving officer - this is the person with the responsibility for diving. eg someone qualified to DM level that can make decisions about particular dives, conditions etc...

Chairman - 'nuff said - this is the mug that organises everything

Treasurer - 'nuff said - the money man

Once you get set-up then you can have people for training (an instructor), equipment etc....

What to do?

The simple way to start is with w/ends away. Personally I organised an inland dive site every w/end during the winter for my old university club, just because it keeps people busy, and the sea was too terrible to dive in. When it gets warmer w/ends away at the nearest bit of sea are easily organised.

Get togethers can be anything from beer / bowling to heavily theoretical stuff like a lecture from our own Dr Deco!

If you make any money then get the club to decide what it wants to use the money for... subsidising trips.. a club library of diving guides for when you organise trips.... buying bits of kit that can then be hired out (and making more money for the club).... saving for a RIB, the list is endless. However, before you organise 1000001 things you need to have a club, and then tailor things to what the club wants!

Getting a store involved

To do this you need a nice friendly dive store, and you literally organise regular meetings, and everything else (trips etc..) you just sell the dive store ones. - not my idea of fun, and what I would avoid at all cost.

I hope this helps, there will be thousands of opportunities for support from your local authorities, as they are quite keen on this type of community sport things. However, I don't know exactly what happens in the US!

If you have specific questions don't hesitate to ask!

Jon T
Been Chairman of 2 different clubs, Treasurer of 2, Diving officer of 1, Equipment officer of 1
 
I belong to the Caloosa Dive Club which has been going strong for over 30 years now. We are not affiliated with any dive shop, but work with several. Check out our website which has lots of info about the club. http://www.diveclub.org/

HTH,

WWW™
 
We could turn into a club real easily, but we like things the way they are. We wouldn't exist if it wasn't for this board. (thanks yall) We were just a group of people who love to dive and decided to get togeather and go. In about two months we are almost 20 people.

You really need a good organizer and a group of people dedicated to making it work. Keep in mind one thing. Getting a group like this started can create some great friendships, but it can also destroy them.

Tom
 
Hey Scuba T, and all…

You might not be that alone! Here are a few URLs that might lead you to a local club in your area. I know that there are a TON of other Scuba Club directories, but these were fairly easy to find with a search engine. Happy hunting…

http://www.scubadirectory.com

http://www.diverlink.com/clubs

http://www.diver411.com/Floridahome.htm

http://www.scubabyte.com/scubaclubs.htm

Now, don’t take this wrong… if you want to create your own club for whatever reason, that is fine by anyone on this board, especially me! Jon T has even given you some excellent pointers and all. I am just giving these URLs because you said there wasn’t one in your area. Of course, I don't even know what area that might be! You might be surprised that there may even be someone on this list near you… just let us know!
 
Scuba T, I don't know where you are located, but from a southern California perspective, we have a number of local dive clubs. It seems, though, that the "survivors" are linked by either a dive shop or a specific interest (i.e. wrecks, photograpy, employer, etc.) Should you choose to affliate with a dive shop, make sure it is one with a good reputation and business practices (it reflects on you) and solid finances that will be around to perform on any promises made. They can offer member discounts as well as newbie contacts, for better or worse. The downside is that they are in this business for money (whereas my club is a non-profit,) they'd love to have your mailing list which you don't want to provide due to privacy considerations, and they might want to take over once you achieve a level of success. You can provide scuba intro "Splash Nights" and non-diving events that interested parties would want, anyway, like concert nights and picnics. The most discouraging thing: what happened at the end of the "baby boom?" Are we aging as a sport, or does noone younger than me remember "Sea Hunt" or the Jacques Cousteau programs on TV?
 
The Texas Swamp Dive Team is sort of an informal club that started off because, due to this board, we discovered that we lived relatively very close to one another. And then during the dives, we happily found out that we are close to the same age and dive expertise level (only one or two of us have more than 50 dives).

And most importantly, our common goal is to enjoy each others company and go diving.

Currently we don't have any "formal" organization because it's not really needed, but we are already discovering that we have some great people who are willing to volunteer their time to organize various things (such as our recent Athens "invasion" and creating a "dive calendar" for next year). And generally whoever organized the event (whether it is a dive or a social gathering) carry's the honor of being the "Leader of the Day".

So at first, try keeping it very loose and informal. Plan dive outings to local sites as often as you can, and intersperse them with non-dive social stuff as well. Always keep a look out for dive related opportunities (trips, gear specials, instruction, etc) and provide some means for your members to get the word out to the rest of the group (e-mail list, or "community forum" like our Texas Swamp Diver site[/b]).

Don't be in too much of a rush to formally organize. And I would only do it if community money is involved.

And Tom's right in that formalizing can have the hazard of alienating someone because they don't like something about the process or the results. So when you reach this step, be sure to tread carefully and take everyone (and their egos/feelings) into consideration. I've seen it happen with other groups (non-diving activities) that I have belonged to and it's no fun. Especially when you loose good friends in the fallout.
 
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