How Should you approach your next recruitment season?

The recruitment process is your clubs biggest opportunity each year. It’s an opportunity for growth, for investment, for identification of volunteers – it’s everything. It is the setup for your season in every way.

An effective recruitment period will be well planned and delegated. A recruitment ‘committee’ with each person responsible for a specific and independent function. Any shared tasks are completed early and together where possible, with review points throughout the delivery of your recruitment process.

This article is intended to step through the Recruitment process, including ensuring your club has a basic digital presence, how best to approach planning, what strategies you can implement (including School Clinics), leading into Conversion Events (Come and Try days, galas, scrimmage games and pre-season trainings) as well as ensuring that you’re best positioned to convert registrations.

Want Even more Reading? Start with the 2023/24 Summer Recruitment Review

Your club should be digitally accessible. This means that a new member can gather all the details they need to make an informed decision within a few clicks.

Website

Your website is a funnel – 20% of members in SEQ for the 2023/24 season found Baseball through Social Media and Search Engines – you want to be able to capture that 20%. You don’t need anything fancy for your website but it does need to be easy to read and easy to use.

There’s a number of resources available for you to review when setting up your Club’s website. The Communications Planner and Websites pages on Club Hub have content breakdowns and the Checklist allows you to make adjustments to your existing website – or form a basis for development of a new one.

Other

Can your committee easily and readily share information as needed? Can any committee member find answers to questions they receive?

Look to acquire a Not-for-Profit license to Office365 or Google Workspace to provide your club with email addresses (you can use your domain! e.g. email@domain.com.au) and online file storage.

Ensure your pages are up-to-date with the appropriate contact details and link direct to the registration information page of your website.

If you have any passionate videographers or media students, consider asking them to setup a TikTok page and create content for the club. This helps them build a portfolio, and your club to build an online presence.

The Initial Plan

The main goal with your initial plan is defining a timeline and a budget. The rest can be filled in as you progress.

This is where you identify your team and allocate responsibilities or define areas each volunteer is interested in assisting with.

Digital Strategies

Sending Emails – Existing Members

Game Day is your database and you’ve got hundreds of contacts. Utilise your existing member base as your first point of contact when setting up for a new season.

Initial email allows you to do one of two things: Offer Early Bird Registration Discounts and seek Volunteers to assist with recruitment activities. You may even offer discounted fees based on volunteering.

Investigate doing a Newsletter – you decide the frequency – but the goal is keeping your members in the loop on projects and activities around the club, building a sense of community and inclusion. Demonstrate changes and feedback that’s been taken on board.

Satisfied members will increase your membership through word of mouth too, so don’t leave them out.

Responding to Emails – New Members

Ensure that you have someone responding to emails!! The contact details included with recruitment information should be someone responsive. Not everyone will contact you via phone call.

Provide relevant information and invite them to attend pre-season events.

Check that your Website is Up-to-date

Make sure that your website is up-to-date with the next season’s information – updated fees, any changes to age groups, game times, etc.

Update the Banner on your Home Page to display upcoming Come and Try days or advertise that registrations for the next season are now open. Link to your Registrations Information page. 

Traditional Media

This is still an advertising method!

Build contacts and get feel-good stories written about successes within your club, a long-time volunteer, a junior with big dreams, or a player who dedicates their time to the community (RFS, SES, Emergency Services, etc.). Newspaper, Radio, TV, they’re all still options if you present a good enough story!

Take advantage of council-owned billboards at Community Centres or Public Spaces, Public Signage, Billboards, Community Notice Boards. (e.g. in your local Coles or supermarket, Community centres, PCYC)

Community Engagement

Opportunities:

• Engaging local community groups, such as PCYCs
  • Delivering programs with local PCYCs
• Building relationships with organisers of local markets, fairs, fetes and shopping centres
  • Attend markets, fairs and fetes to get your name and brand out there, these can also be effective fundraising tools as well
• Building relationships with organisations interested in entering corporate teams
  • Some organisations fully fund or subsidise their staff to play in community sport, so you may get a few players or an entire sponsored team.
• Partner with another local sports club (alternate season)
  • Special offers for partner club players.
• Build relationships with local Universities or Tafe Campuses
  • Offer discounted registrations for students
  • Potential to look at a full team of students as well

The opportunities are truly endless, partnerships can develop into sponsorships if handled correctly.

Take Advantage of Council Opportunities

• Signage, billboards and community centres are great ways of getting (usually free) visibility
• Local politicians are great for advertising, but are also integral to develop relationships with (funding!)

Some councils offer programs or host events that your club can utilise to reach the local community.

Logan City Council run a KRANK program – which encourages community organisations to provide low-cost activities during school holidays.

Townsville City Council run a Get Active Sign On day each year where your club can setup a stall and advertise to residents looking for their next sporting club.

Conversion Events

All the progress and hard work can go out the window at this step. Converting to a paid registration has to be an extremely simple process. If you make people jump through too many hoops, they’ll simply stop jumping.

The Basics around Registrations

Accept online registrations as soon as you can. Once BA and BQ have locked in their fees, your club fees should be locked, loaded and ready to go.

Offer direct links to your registration form on at least:

• Your website (Registration Info page)
• Your social media (Pinned posts + QR code in your Cover Photo)

Do not require players to fill out EOI forms just to receive a link to your registration form. This really only applies when you’re running a program that’s outside of your normal registration products where you need to gauge interest to know if the program is proceeding.

Alternatively, EOI forms are useful if capitations have not yet been posted but you’d like to start preparing for the season.

Conversion Events

Now you might be asking why I keep referring to them as Conversion Events and not Come and Try days, and that’s because a Come and Try day is just one of your options.

The Tips:

• Run multiple events in the lead up to the season
• Try to run some events that target specific demographics
  • g. T-Ball/Rookie Ball, Little League, Seniors, Womens and Masters
  • Cater each event to the target demographic – you might have additional fun activities for the Juniors, or the bar open for the Seniors, Masters and Womens (a meet your teammates style get together and try out)
• Cover different timeslots where possible
  • Some people are available weekends, some are best for weeknights – cater to everyone

Pre-Season Scrimmage and Trainings

You can only run Come and Try days for so long, luckily Social Media advertising can be extended as needed.

You can target specific age groups to fill those final spots on teams and have players attend pre-season scrimmage games and trainings.

Idea for scrimmage games: Baseball with a Buddy

New players partnered with experienced players to learn positions in a mock-game.

Summary

Baseball Queensland is available to assist you in your recruitment planning and processes.

Game Development Manager

gamedevelopment@baseballqld.asn.au

The Game Development Manager can assist in the organisation and staffing of School Clinics and running community based programs, such as partnerships with PCYC.

Club Support Coordinator

clubdevelopment@baseballqld.asn.au

Nick Wyllie, the Club Support Coordinator, is happy to be super involved. He is able to provide your club with adaptable Canva templates for Social Media, Posters and other Media uses. Guide you on establishing Social Media marketing, seeking website hosting and design and more. Reach out and see where and how he can assist you.

Grant Applications Can be Daunting – so Let’s step through it together!

This is a summary of the information required to complete a Gambling Community Benefit Fund application. The GCBF is one of the easier grants to apply for, as the amount of detail required during the application process is minimal (when compared to certain other grants).

That doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to get funding when you apply, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the application process is going to take you a few hours.

For the best chance of success, you will still need to prepare and review your application in advance.

The information within this article is accurate as of January 2024.

Key to remember: If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. A rushed application will be very clear. Grants are typically awarded to projects that are ready to go.

What is the Gambling Community Benefit Fund?

The Gambling Community Benefit Fund (GCBF) distributes approximately $60 million each year across 4x rounds. This grant is funded by Queensland gambling taxes.

Currently, these rounds consist of a $100,000 Super Round in February, and $35,000 Standard Rounds in May, August and October.

As incorporated entities, all current Baseball clubs and regions within Queensland are eligible to apply for funding through this grant.

You are able to apply the grant to a wide variety of projects, including events, equipment, facility improvements, marketing, installation of solar and machinery or vehicles.

As with most grants, you cannot apply for funding for items purchased prior to the approval of the grant, fees for services, operating costs or for use generating income.

Currently, the selection committee prioritises applications in order of top to bottom.

1. Items/facilities directly affected, damaged or destroyed by a declared natural disaster in the last 2 years.
2. Equipment or facility improvements
3. Buses, cars, caravans, boats, tractors, trailers, large mowers, motorbikes and similar items.
4. Community events, training, workshops, festivals, publications and website development.
5. Organisations that have received more than $15,000 from the GCBF within the last 2 years.

For more information, please view the full guidelines linked below.

Step 1: Register to the Online Grants Portal or Update your Details

If your club/region does not have an account:

If your club/region already has an account:

Upon logging into the JAG Portal, you will be prompted to update your organisation’s details.

Ensure that this page is as up-to-date as possible, this includes updating:

• Organisation Contact
• Financial Position
  • Date of last audited financials
  • Income
  • Expenditure
  • Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Cash at Bank
  • Investments
• Club Bank Details
  • This bank verification form must be completed. Click here.
• Organisation Overview if not previously completed
• Organisation President and Accountable Officer details

Step 2: Completing the APplication

Page 4

Page 4 is the core of the application, so I’ve split it from the above accordion into slightly more detailed sections.

Page 5

You’re almost done – make sure that you’ve proof-read your application, ideally, you’ve also had someone else look over it.

Double and triple check that you’ve got all of the required documentation attached.

Finalise your application by answering the last two Yes or No questions, fill in your details as the declaration officer, agree to the terms and conditions and submit.

Step 3: Assessment Process

The GCBF doesn’t require that you submit quotes with your application, instead, they will request quotes from you during the assessment process.

If more information and/or quotes are requested, ensure that you provide everything requested promptly and ensure that you address all requests thoroughly.

The last thing you want to do is submit further information and then realise that you missed something requested or valuable.

Again, have someone double-check the information you’re submitting as an extra safety net against errors or ommissions.

Should you be successful, ensure that you’re aware of the information on the page linked below. Funding will be transferred within 14 days of the approval email.

Step 4: Acquittals

Information on acquitting your GCBF grant is available on this page:

Some key items to remember:

Each invoice or receipt must be scanned or photographed individually.

When saving scans/photos, name it using the invoice/receipt number.

If you have more than 15 invoices/receipts to acquit or you were granted more than $35,000, you must engage an external financial auditor to check your expenditure against the guidelines.

You may use some of the granted funds to cover the cost of the audit:

• up to $500 for grants under $35,000
• up to $1000 for grants over $35,000

You must keep all documents relating to the grant for 7 years.

Hopefully, this article helps you to plan out an application for the Gambling Community Benefit Fund. Ensuring that you’re setting yourself up for success well in advance of an upcoming round.

Maybe you’re less confident, and if so, there’s support available:

For advice and support through the application process, reach out to Baseball Queensland’s Club Support Coordinator, nick.wyllie@baseballqld.asn.au

If you’re seeking quotes, have a look at the Supplier Database, you may find an additional organisation that can provide you quotes on your project.

What was done well and where can we improve – Summer Recruitment 2023/24

The 2023/24 Summer Recruitment season has wrapped up, with GBL and GCBA being a third of the way into their respective competitions and Sunshine Coast reaching finals for their Spring season. Collectively, we’ve seen an increase in memberships for Summer and there are still plenty of takeaways and areas for improvement heading into Winter 2024 and Summer 24/25.

Start Early and Plan

The deciding factor in how successful of a recruitment period you have is your planning. It is important to decide early on what you’re leading to.

The steps:

1. Identify a Recruitment Coordinator early.

2. Identify your Come and Try days.

• This is your target for every other initiative to link into. You’ll want to run multiple catering to different audiences and at different times – be accessible.
• It may then help to organise pre-season trainings alongside/after these events.

3. Define your strategy.

• Identify your local schools and their contacts early, lock in clinics ASAP and coordinate with BQ Game Development to ensure they’re appropriately staffed.
• Identify community events or groups that you can engage with.
• Can you work with local politicians to advertise with them/at their events?
• Can you approach businesses for corporate teams or other partnerships in your local area.
• Are you effectively utilising digital recruitment strategies?

4. Define responsibilities.

• Try to assign tasks to peoples strengths and get as many people helping out as possible.
• Avoid overlap when delegating tasks to reduce conflicts and areas where “I thought they were doing X”

5. Execute

• Follow through on your plan. Complete tasks when you’ve identified for them to be completed.

6. Adapt and Review

• Adapt and continually look to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. Reach as many people as possible.
• Review the success of your initiatives once each stage wraps up, with a final review once the season is underway to work out where you need to focus more on or learn more about before next season.

School Clinics

Organise early and build it into your overall strategy. Term 3 is busy, it’s also the main period for Summer recruitment for multiple sports. So, engage with your local schools early, build out a list of contacts at each school and keep it within the committee for future years.

The all-new BQ School Ambassador program is building a list of contacts at schools around the state, so make sure to liaise with the BQ Game Development Manager, as there may be direct Sport/PE contacts at your local schools. Take advantage of BQ Development Officers (DO’s), however, you need to organise this early – there is a limited pool of DO’s and they can only be in so many places at once.

We also offer free hire of equipment kits. Make sure to book them early to ensure you have them when you need them.

Brisbane North clubs did school clinics really well, out of 74 members that identified school clinics as the method they found Baseball, 60 of them were at Brisbane North clubs.

Take Full Advantage of Digital Opportunities

Thanks to Game Day, we know that almost 20% of members said they heard about Baseball through Social Media and Search Engines.

The importance of a current, up-to-date, search engine-optimised websites and social media suites is incredibly important to an effective recruitment period.

Social Media

Ensure that your social media is up to date as well! Not just Facebook, all of your accounts. Facebook and Instagram allow you to post to both at the same time – so do it.

Utilise paid advertising to reach members that will never see your normal posts. Unpaid reach, especially on Facebook, is terrible – paid reach on Facebook will get you seen by thousands (likely parents).

Short form video content (approx. 7 second videos) work the best on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts – punchy, short, sharp and engaging videos. You won’t need to pay to boost these, and they’ll typically be reaching younger audiences.

Facebook is typically for the parents and grandparents – Instagram and TikTok are mixed, skewing towards younger audiences – YouTube is a bit of everyone. Take advantage of all of these platforms. Content you make for one can typically be used for the others, don’t make more work for yourself. (Customised content will always be better, but you’ll need someone who knows their stuff and I honestly do not)

Emails

Make sure you’re responding to emails, identify your most responsive person or people and ensure that all email queries are being actively responded to. (CC everyone in to make sure anyone else that received it knows it’s been responded to)

Send out an email to last years’ members to invite them back! You can consider offering early bird discount codes, which can be facilitated through Game Day.

Involve those returning members by including your goals for the season, how the committee want to build on the previous year and anything you’re doing differently. (Ideally responding to feedback you’ve collected!) Make the members feel valued and they’ll want to come back.

Remove barriers – don’t add them.

You should never be adding hoops for potential members to jump through. Have them register directly through the Game Day portal at your earliest opportunity. If you can assist them through the process at a Come and Try day, you’ll be golden.

Don’t add extra EOI forms if you can avoid it. If you can’t get them to register straight away, that’s when you collect their contact details to be able to follow them up and invite them back to your next event or pre-season training. Keep them engaged!

Targeting specific groups

Sometimes making people feel comfortable enough to try is your best recruitment strategy. Consider offering a Female only Come and Try and/or an U12s Come and Try.

Clubs that offer a Female Come and Try day tend to enter more teams in those competitions, while specifying age groups for your Come and Try days allows you to control numbers and create safe environments where people are trying the game with others of their age.

Create capacity – don’t restrict it.

There’s a natural capacity at every club, with field space being the primary limitation. You can always find more coaches, introduce incentives, and get people trained up. Understand your current demand and prepare for more next season, even if you don’t increase in members, you’ll have increased in potential volunteers!

Work with your existing and experienced coaches to mentor new coaches throughout the season, you could partner with local clubs or work with your region to organise regional coaching development courses. Encourage and accommodate accreditation opportunities; work with QBUA and QBS, and surrounding clubs, to build your collective officials base.

Game Day

1. Make sure your club products are mandatory, there were several situations where clubs had products that were optional and had to then chase members for fees.
2. Ensure there is no overlap in the ages of your products – e.g. U16s, U18s or U20s does not overlap with Adult Seniors
3. Understand what recruitment initiatives are working. This is why we have the “How did you hear about us?” question on the registration forms; here’s the 2023/24 Summer data:

As you can see, a large majority of members found baseball through word of mouth, search engines and social media. Digital presence is key – while school clinics needs to see a major improvement!

Conversion Events

Come and Try days are incredibly important!

It goes back to what I said earlier, if you can’t make people comfortable enough to try, they won’t even give you a chance.

Ensuring that you have an appropriate spread of Come and Try opportunities, whether that’s targeted events, fun carnivals, or mini pre-season tournaments – you decide. Make sure there’s opportunity at different times and different days. If you have lights, offer a weeknight Come and Try, or an information session at your batting cage where you can setup a tee or do some soft toss.

As mentioned before, also offer some targeted events. Whether it’s a few hours at the start or end of your main Come and Try or a specific weeknight or weekend event that is for Women, Juniors, Masters, etc.

Make people comfortable, and give them an opportunity to try.

Take advantage of the inflatable batting tunnel which BQ hires out to clubs free of charge. Make sure to book it early!

Summary

Ensuring that your club engages in planning early will lead to a cohesive, targeted, and thorough recruitment process that expands upon your clubs’ reach into the local community.

Make sure to engage in School Clinics, they can be an extremely effective tool, BQ offers support in engaging with schools, renting equipment and providing staff. Engage with the BQ Game Development Manager early.

Take full advantage of social media, your club website and direct emails to members.