Communication key if clubs are to stay in the black

It’s a scenario that’s become depressingly familiar to members of sports clubs all over the country.

The club treasurer, or registrar, or someone in authority at least, discovers there’s a shortfall in the organisation’s finances, calls a meeting to discuss it, and the next morning the members gird their loins for a fundraising drive: a raffle, a benefit night, a new surge in selling the club lottery tickets. That’ll get the club back on its feet, right? Wrong. That’s their first mistake. What they should really do initially is nothing. A chat with Warren Healy of myclubfinances.com helped show the logic to that inertia.

“Every club is struggling to raise money,” he said. “Typically there’s a meeting on a Thursday night when the club officers realise they need to raise money, and they’ll ring us on Friday to activate our system to do that.