Doing the best for your club means getting maximum value from your committee or management team. You’ll meet regularly, so following these simple steps will help you to spend as long as you need to sort out the club’s business — and no longer.

Before the meeting

Does this need to be a meeting?

First things first, do you need a meeting, or is this simply a fixture in the diary? If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to reevaluate what’s important, so do you all actually need to commit this time together? …

Whether it’s a sports club, a choir, an orchestra, amateur dramatics, or something else, starting a club is a brilliant way to meet like-minded people and even learn something about yourself while doing it.

It can seem quite a daunting task initially, but broken down into smaller chunks you can definitely do it, and you don’t have to do it by yourself.

So how do you actually get a new club off the ground? This guide will walk you through the important first steps you’ll need to take to plan and establish the club.

This guide is in four sections:

1. …

By their very nature of being social organisations, clubs know other clubs. Some clubs are trailblazers that others look to, for inspiration and best practice. Maybe that’s your club.

With the launch of our Payzip Affiliate Programme, we’re now able to make those relationships a source of income for your club, at no additional cost to you or them.

When you introduce a club to Payzip, whenever they receive a card payment (including Apple Pay and Google Pay), we’ll pay you 10% of the Payzip service fee (terms apply). Every time. For as long as that club uses Payzip. …

Running a club involves a lot of work. Collecting money from members is fundamental, but whilst collecting payments allows the club to run, there are plenty of other tasks competing for your attention too.

Collecting member payments online has a number of benefits, which we’ll look at here. When paired with an online member payment solution, a lot of the work involved in collecting those payments manually can be reduced or eliminated entirely. Let’s get into it!

Save time

Your time is precious. Anything you can do to minimise admin work frees you up for other important club tasks. …

As a club treasurer or secretary, the club’s finances and understanding upcoming payments are of utmost importance, so you can predict cash flow. Being in-the-know is crucial, and these are figures that are checked frequently, so we’ve made them front-and-centre in Payzip.

At-a-glance dashboard information

If you used version 1 of Payzip, you’ll know it only had two states for categorising invoice amounts: due and paid. Of course, real-world invoices don’t work this way — you have a limited amount of time to pay, and then the amount becomes overdue. This helps you separate what items need actioning right now from what needs a gentle nudge over the coming days and weeks.

We’ve introduced overdue as a status in Payzip. Now, when you create and send an invoice, the amount is owed before the specified due date, and overdue once it elapses, as you’d expect…

Using email to help collect your club’s money is great. It’s fast, convenient, and well-understood as a communication method (it should be — the first email is nearly 50 years old!). However, it’s not perfect.

The chances are you’re gathering your members’ email addresses by hand. Either you’re typing them in, or they are, somewhere, and it’s easy to make a mistake. A “.com” instead of a “.co.uk”. The address they gave you a couple of years back might no longer be valid. …

As a treasurer or membership secretary, there are lots of ways you can ask members to pay the club. We’ve seen organisations switch to digital options during the COVID-19 pandemic, to reduce in-person contact at training or rehearsal. Let’s look at the main payment methods, and their pros and cons:

Payment methods

Cash and cheques

These are the most time-consuming for you, and potentially the most expensive. You’ll have to record the payment in the club’s accounts and physically visit the bank in order to deposit the payments. Some banks have made this easier by incorporating cheque clearing by photo in their apps, so at…