Club Update – Q1 2024
Hi All
There’s a lot going on in the background of the club at the moment, and we want to get everyone’s thoughts in a few areas before we make a few decisions regarding the future.
The most immediate and probably largest change is to do with the venue. We’ve been in the hall at Byron for just over 2 years now, and it’s served us pretty well (mostly, looking at you, leaky roof!). I’ve recently been sent the paperwork for the 2024 standing booking which would see us through to the end of this year in our current format – primarily Thursdays, plus the occasional weekend. There has been a fair bit of discussion over the past few months about looking for an alternate venue in order to start growing the club beyond what we have at the moment – something that I think everyone agrees would be a positive change.
It’s been an ongoing process, trying to find somewhere that’s suitable and meets as many of the key ‘wants’ that we’re working to:
- Space to grow beyond the table setup we have now
- Easily accessible for as many members and future members as possible
- Kitchen and bathroom facilities that meet or exceed what we have now
- Storage, for what’s become a pretty decent collection of scenery (10+ tables) and mats – and potentially a club games library / club armies for the various games that we play
- Internet connection (I’m a tech geek at heart, having this opens up sooooo many ideas I’ve had – plus would be really handy day to day)
We think we’ve found a venue that is worth exploring further after an initial visit last week. It’s a newly built community centre in Hetton, and will be opening during March. As such they have a pretty open diary and are keen to fill it – the dates that we’ve suggested for the events we have pencilled in are all available. For anyone curious about location or for working out the viability of travel, you can find the hall here:
Google Maps – https://maps.app.goo.gl/n26GxJ9MrGgsKeyp9
What 3 Words – https://what3words.com/careful.ducks.scripted
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/p/Moorsley-District-CIO-100064819566135/
To give a quick summary of the hall, there are two main rooms that we could have access to. The smaller of the two is a bit bigger than where we are now. I’d say space for 4 or 5 similar table spaces to what we have now. The larger room I’d say is 8-10 tables. They’re effectively partitioned with a divider, so we could use both parts together for larger events if we wanted to – I’m sure we could fill the full hall with the right events. The kitchen is bigger and newer – was still being installed while we were there. The big thing for me is that there is a massive walk-in store cupboard and secure outside storage that we would have access to. To give an idea of the space we’d need, I’d suggested something along the lines of 10-15 of the storage boxes we use for scenery and a few mats in bags to begin with, which would fit without issue. There’d also be some space on the racking for boxes of games / armies / hobby resources when we get to that point.
The committee that runs the hall are still working out the final pricing structure but have suggested that if we were to book long term we would be able to get a cheaper rate. I have a feeling that it may be a little more than the hall we’re in now though, which would mean us having to either increase costs per session, or attendance numbers to cover the new costs.
To give a bit of context to the numbers, we were given the ballpark figures of £15/h for the large room and £10/h for the smaller room as a baseline booking rate – at this stage, not sure if that accounts for the long term booking discount, so I’ll assume not for the moment.
With that in mind, we’d be looking at the following:
| Room | Small | Large |
| Price Per Hour | £10.00 | £15.00 |
| Evening Booking of 4hrs (5.30pm to 9.30pm) | £40.00 | £60.00 |
| Cost per Head – 4 attendees | £10.00 | £15.00 |
| Cost per Head – 8 attendees | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Cost per Head – 12 attendees | £3.33 | £5.00 |
| Day Booking of 9hrs (9am to 6pm) | £90.00 | £135 |
| Cost per Head – 4 attendees | £22.50 | £33.75 |
| Cost per Head – 8 attendees | £11.25 | £16.88 |
| Cost per Head – 12 attendees | £7.50 | £11.25 |
I know a few people have mentioned that they would be happy to pay slightly more either per session or by adding a ‘yearly membership’ for an improved club / venue. Based on the above – if costs were to increase, what kind of fees would people find acceptable?
This brings us on to the 2nd ‘big’ thing. We’d like to seriously look at converting the club to a proper independent entity. This would give it a stronger foundation on which to grow, and allow us to look into funding to help us along the way for things such as equipment, promotion and events. I’ve talked around this before on a couple of occasions, and have a few ideas to work out properly, but would love to get some input or feedback from people that have experience of similar things. At this stage, I think the more information we have up front, the better the outcome will be.
If you’ve got this far, we’d love any feedback you have to the above. Happy to take any feedback using the form below, or if people want to message me or Lis directly or catch up in person on a club night that’s great too 🙂