High School Clubs: Three Steps on How to Grow and Retain Club Members

Written by Aidan Carey

Do you have a passion that you wish you could share with others or a community you want to grow, but it just doesn’t seem like anyone else is interested?

Then this blog is for you!

In this blog, I’m going to lay out the process of how you can get more people to join the community you love!

Steps to Establish A Club

Step 1: Pick the Club and Set Your Goal

It’s crucial to think about both the current state of your high school club and the goal that you are trying to reach. Once you do that, you’ll be able to find how to best get from point A to point B. With that in mind, here are some questions to think about:

• Are you trying to start an entirely new club from the ground up?

• Is your club on life support and in desperate need of new members to stay afloat?

• Is your club sizable already, and you could use new minds to support the team?

For each of these, your goals might be different. In the last case, you can take a slow and steady, long-term oriented approach. For the first two, however, there is much more urgency in terms of the time frame. For instance, if you were to start a new chess club in Illinois, in order to compete you need at least 8 members. While you might not have to deal with such a strict requirement, it’s still important to set an attainable goal so you have something you’re working towards.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

For some clubs, this might seem straightforward. If you’re recruiting for the math team, you’d want to look for people who are already in other STEM clubs or who excel in math classes. While this is a good place to start, it’s important not to stay stuck in the assumption that everyone who joins your club will fit cleanly in such a stereotype. In my experience, while the majority of people on my chess team were indeed in other STEM clubs, there were still a significant number of people who excelled in history or the arts. In other words, keep your options open, but understand that targeting a specific group makes it more likely they’ll join.

Step 3: How to Recruit Club Members

Now we get to the toughest part: the actual recruiting. It’s time to put our plans into action!

The following methods are just a small sample of what worked for me, so be creative in your approach.

• Create flyers

  If you or another member of your high school club have graphic design skills, this is the perfect time to put them to use! Create an eye-popping flyer and put it wherever you can (with approval): in the halls, by water fountains, in classrooms, or anywhere else people will see it. Digital flyers also exist! Post information about your club on social media, and maybe even make a dedicated social media account for your club.

• Announcements

  If your school has daily announcements, get your high school club mentioned. This ensures that many, many ears will hear about your group. Announcing the first day of the club is one way, but another is to update the school on any successes you have. If you have a successful club, that’s going to get people to notice you.

• Club Days

  If your school has a club day, make sure you have a station setup. For this, it is vital that you do something interactive. You’re competing against a whole room of other clubs, so it’s crucial that you stand out amidst the crowd. I was always jealous of the therapy animal club because everyone would flock to see the cute animals. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have fluffy beasts on your side, still do something engaging as opposed to just standing around with a sign.

• Word of mouth

  This is a big one. Spread the word. One easy way is to tell your members to tell their friends to join. If everyone in your club gets one friend to join, you just doubled in size! And that person’s friend might have another friend, who might have another friend, who might have another friend...

Now that you‘ve crushed your goal and have a mammoth-sized crowd lining up to join your high school club, you might be asking, what do I do with all these new members?

My number one piece of advice is to make them feel welcome! I’ve seen clubs where the captains spent the entire time talking to themselves instead of all the new members. That’s certainly not how you create a welcoming environment. Instead, focus on activities that can help newer, potentially less experienced members, feel comfortable participating. By being engaged, they’ll be more likely to come back. Retaining these new members is just as important as getting them to show up in the first place!

Thanks for reading! Good luck on growing your gigantic group!