How to get parents to pay club fees?

rom

I am the registrar for a club with about 150 members. It is mostly juvenile but also with a large fit4life element. In recent years records have been poor mainly due to people doing multiple jobs. I took over the role of registrar mid last year. Trying to get people to renew their membership is hard.

I have recorded roll from each session so I know who is and isn't attending so it's not the people who aren't that I am concerned about. From athletics Ireland memo on insurance for new members it states that they are insured for a small number of sessions 2/3 (as a try out) and then need to register. Those are ok. The issue I have is with the members who renew every year. 

I don't want to following up with them 6 months time. I don't have time for this. I have left loads of notes on the whatzapp groups about this. They have got the renewal notice sent out. Last week they got a note sent home to renew. Literally 40 of these notes sent home and not one additional renewal. I know times are hard etc but all of these parents are working and not short in money.

In years before they used to for some reason mainly due to again one person doing multiple jobs reduce the membership later in the year for new members. Some of the lazy renewers would avail of that as an option and it would not be followed up. For example 1/2 in the summer and 1/4 near the end of the year. Some of this is a legacy issue from COVID as training was reduced significantly.

So my question is how do I get parents to pay their renewals for their children on time? What happens at your club. What happens if people don't pay? Where do they draw the line. What do they use to motivate people to pay? I can understand their may be 10 or 15 people that may have issues etc but not much more than 1/2 the club.

nice bit of green

Turn them away when they attempt to participate in club events? As unpalatable as it sounds, that’s the reality of not paying for the service.

Former Former Former

Yeah, tell them that little Johnny won't be covered by insurance as he's not properly registered, so he can't attend next week's session. From my own experience, you need to send individual notices to people, it's too easy to ignore/forget the group messages.

radiotrickster

As others have said, if they’re not paying then they’re not members so they shouldn’t be availing of services.

It would be like not paying your Netflix subscription. Netflix will just cut you off.

I’d send an individual notice to each member saying “Your membership has officially expired. You must pay ~insert fee~ by X date to continue attending.”

Donald Trump

Maybe your club could also have a "fund" set up so that genuine hardship cases could apply for a waiver of membership fees. That way nobody gets excluded. I know that that isn't the reason for the parents not paying but it allows you to say "from next week, non-members cannot attend, however we would like to remind everyone that you can apply for a waiver of fees"

Doe Tiden

I’m on the committee of a sports club much like athletics where as most of the competitions are for individual athletes, and we have had the same issue what we have done is held registration nights and told parents of kids aren’t registered by a certain date then, even if they register past that date they won’t be eligible for competitions later in the year, it has worked well tbh.

Xidu

I feel you OP.

I used to help collecting quarterly fees and it’s painful people ignore you and have to spend time to constantly remind them. Record it. And they don’t appreciate the time you put in. All I did was free service so after 1 year I quit.

farmerval

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120172647#Comment_120172647

That is the only way. OP if you are being left to this on your own then the club committee are selling you short. Should be club rules, communicated to everyone, no fees beyond a certain date, no participate in either training or competing. Then organise 2-3 registration evenings before training starts. Any laggards left send notification that they can no longer attend if fess are not paid by the cut off date. Insurance, the scourge of amateur clubs is your saviour here. Use it as the stick to beat them with. Not registered, not insured, club can't take the risk. Massively important that the club committee back you 100% on this. On your own your going nowhere.