Yes. And No.
It's different for every club, but flip it on it's head - as a member's club, they are not paid, and if they are looking after prospective members they're not getting on with their own shooting. The shooting they have paid for in their annual subs and their time/labour at work parties or whatnot.
I imagine they've seen that commercial places are able to charge those sorts of prices and fancy a bit of that. If you buy someone a gliding experience flight it'll cost you £90, even though most gliding clubs are amateur clubs exactly like shooting, and the cost of the launch and flight time is not more than £15-30.
At one club we started doing induction courses rather than trial evenings. £20 for 4 weekly sessions. That club was in an urban area and had so many enquiries that the instructors were swamped - so running courses weeded out the tyre kickers and immediately called for a (small) level of commitment. There was no obligation to join afterwards but by queuing people up you controlled the number of people there on an evening.
I obviously don't know which club you are referring to or whether they are oversubscribed, but that could be one explanation.
It's not that you want to price people out or limit participation, but equally every club has limits on capacity, and if you're so oversubscribed that you can afford to levy a fee which can go back into improving the club, then that's not a bad thing necessarily.
One should also bear in mind that just because they are a non-profit members club doesn't mean they should open their doors for free. Rock up at a golf course and tell them you're thinking of joining but can you go and have a free round? Generally, the answer is going to be to point at the visitor's rate and at best they might knock the non-member premium you've paid off your membership fee if you join.
Given that it is a members club, owned by the members, it's not unreasonable that they charge a fee for the use of the facilities they have built and paid for out of their own pockets!
Of course all that sits in stark contrast to the Good-of-the-Sport argument which says we want to expose as many as possible to shooting. But that depends on how many instructors you have, how much club kit, time, etc.
Is it better to have a handful of people spend £20, get to use decent kit in a well-maintained facility (paid for with those £20s), and come back with a positive impression (because the instructors have been able to spend some 1-on-1 time with them because there's only a few of them), or to throw open the doors and have anyone off the street queuing up for a 5 minute blat with an old BSA Meteor before you rush the next person onto the range, unable to really connect or spend quality time with anyone because the place is rammed? Horses for courses. There are thousands of clubs, all with differing facilities and capabilities. There is no "right" or "wrong" answer that applies to all clubs.
Originally Posted by
craig9mm
hardly the sprat to catch the mackerel,esp if they want junior members,which is really the only way forward,surprised if anyone turns up
Maybe they have sufficient juniors (bearing in mind juniors need lots of supervision, which has to come from somewhere, and aren't usually productive members of the club in terms of ROing or work parties - until they're 16/17 at least). You can have too much of a good thing. By contrast, most 30-somethings have an income, don't need to be driven everywhere by their parents and still have a potential lifetime of shooting and club membership ahead of them.
Maybe their current emphasis is adult recruitment, or the recently retired with no mortgage; a modest disposable income and lots of time for a new hobby. Without knowing more about the current demographic of the club, their finances, facilities, etc then it's impossible for any of us judge how appropriate or otherwise their recruitment methodology is.
Last edited by Hemmers; 17-09-2014 at 02:24 PM.
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