Does My Club Need a Website?
Many target sport and rifle clubs in the UK struggle with recruitment, often attributing public apathy or even hostility to general anti-gun sentiment. However, the “antis” are rarely identified beyond casting vague aspersions at the mainstream media.
In truth? We are our own worst enemies - hiding in the shadows for fear of ridicule or derision.
In my (anecdotal, but relatively diverse) experience, many, many people have some level of positive exposure to target sports - whether it was time in a cadet contingent, shooting through Scouts or even just a session breaking Clay Pigeons on a corporate day or with a stag party. I came to rifle shooting through a University Club. Prior to that I shot non-competitively with Cadets and knew of a local Clay Pigeon ground. But I had literally no conception of the wider rifle sports. I didn’t know this was something civilians could do on a broader basis, nor that a local rifle club shot on our Cadet Range at weekends!
If the general British public are hostile to the shooting sports it is almost universally out of ignorance. People fear what they don’t understand, or misunderstand. In the UK in particular, this is reinforced by US-centric media coverage - which has no real relevance to the British or European relationship with firearms, but is often superimposed by those who simply don’t know any better. And why should they? We do our best to pretend that we don’t exist! There isn’t a serious, organised anti-gun lobby in the UK, yet the community suffers from widespread negative perceptions. It’s down to the community to recruit, inform and change those views. A quick inspection of the NRA’s Club Finder shows that of ~350 clubs, some 83 don’t have a website. That’s 83 clubs who don’t want to be found!
Isn’t that rather the NRA/NSRA/CPSA’s job?
At a club level? No, not really. It’s your club!
In my years on forums and social media I have seen many whines and whinges along the lines of “If only the
Some organisations do this more successfully than others. But beyond that national remit (and specific local interventions or representations as required), responsibility for recruitment and indeed local media coverage falls very firmly with individual Clubs and Associations.
But we don’t recruit from the public
“We’re an Old Boys/Veterans Club or part of a larger company-based Social Club.”
I’ll give you that. This is the one exception to the rule. If you genuinely don’t recruit from the public and do your recruitment within a specific company or grouping of people then a website is optional - there is presumably an internal site, newsletter or index where you advertise. Even then however, it can be very useful for awareness within the sport and amongst the public, where you can trumpet achievements and wins.
Is it really that important?
We might not think of clubs as businesses, but that’s what they are - non-profits to be sure, run by-and-for the members. But as an organisation the first and overwhelming duty is to keep the lights on. Worse, you are operating in the Leisure Sector - a fickle business where 100% of expenditure is discretionary (and we’re not just talking financials). Nobody needs to join your club, the NRA or the NSRA. They must be convinced it’s worth their time and money. You are in direct competition with other sports, whether that is the nearby Golf, Archery or Hockey club, or the local Model Railway Association. If people don’t know you exist, you’re going to have a hard time.
But we’re on our Association’s club finder!
Are you? Here is the NSRA’s Club Finder. Or rather, where it used to be. It’s been canned. This is probably temporary - I understand the NSRA has a new website coming (though turning off the existing one in the meantime is a bit curious). But the point is that if your club relied on it, then it isn’t there any more. Having a website allows a club to take responsibility for its own “shop front”, regardless of whether or not your NGB is linking to it.
Moreover, the old NSRA Finder looked rather like the NRA Club Finder - a list of clubs (granted, split by county) with little or no further information. A brief look down the NRA Finder shows that at least 50% of the clubs listed don’t have a website. Worse yet, they haven’t even provided a few words of copy, perhaps mentioning the counties or region in which they operate or what disciplines they pursue. Sometimes it is obvious from the name - but where on earth might Albion Gun Club operate? Do they shoot TR, CSR, Running Deer? By contrast, Bearsted and Thurnham Rifle Club not only have a website, but their listing states quite clearly:
Bearsted and Thurnham Rifle Club
Website for the Bearsted and Thurnham Rifle Club. Based near Maidstone, Kent.
It could be fleshed out a bit, but even if they didn’t have a website, a prospective member could have searched on Maidstone; Kent; Bearsted or Thurnham and found the listing! The Maidstone bit is especially important because Bearsted and Thurnham are villages and a bit overly specific. Reference to the wider area or the nearest town is something visitors and search engines can latch onto.
What’s also odd is that some clubs (such as Uttoxeter RC) have a very good website but aren’t actually on the NRA Club Finder! There is joint responsibility here - clubs should be ensuring that the NRA have listed them, and the NRA in turn should be pestering clubs to provide content for their Club Finder.
Say you’re right - nobody in the club has the skills.
Truly? Nobody? Maybe not on the committee, but in the entire club? What about their partners? Kids? If that is genuinely the case, then know that having a website is no longer technically demanding. Many off-the-shelf services such as wix.com or wordpress.com offer powerful site builders to get you started. If you can cope with writing an email, you can navigate their site-builders with little to no technical knowledge. More on tech choices in this article.
Ah, well we can’t you see - security.
The old “Special Pleading” argument. Please don’t kid yourself. People know where you are. Rifle ranges aren’t subtle - they go bang! They’re also very obvious on Google Earth if you know what you’re looking for - even indoor ranges.
Of course, you don’t necessarily need to put your exact street address online, and it is prudent not to post photos of the armoury (if your club has one) or details of the club’s security arrangements. But in the general case, “security by obscurity” does not apply. An armoury worth the title should be able to withstand attack long enough for a response to a monitored alarm - whether through a subscription service like BT Redcare/ADT Monitoring or a GSM alarm that sends alerts to committee members who can call the Police.
It does not harm your security to have a simple website stating who you are, the area you serve, what disciplines you participate in and some basic contact details. A summary of information should be provided to the NRA and/or NSRA for their Club Finders. You can hand out actual directions on inquiry.
Yes okay, you’ve made your point. But we’ve got a Facebook Page. Isn’t that enough?
Um, sort of. Don’t get me wrong - that’s an excellent start and well done. Facebook is popular because it does lots of things well. It’s free, easy to set up, offers unlimited photo and video hosting, and everybody else is already on it (sort of…).
The trouble with social media is you have no control over the platform. If Facebook decides tomorrow that it doesn’t like guns, it can just shutter all the shooting-related Groups and Pages. Just like that. It’s their platform, they set the rules.
It also depends who you are targeting. Younger people are trending away from Facebook to other platforms. Facebook is no longer the up-coming thing and eventually will go the way of MySpace. Moreover, in the past 12 months many users have closed their accounts over privacy concerns (see: Cambridge Analytica scandal). It’s churlish to say you shouldn’t use Facebook because clearly it has vast reach, but it’s also well into middle-age. Social media strategy is a whole separate topic but suffice to say, it’s best to use these platforms to drive users to your website which you control and not bet the farm on a third party service which can be arbitrarily shuttered or restricted by someone in San Francisco.
In Summary
Date social, marry web. Any platform you don’t own should be considered transitory.
Yes you should have a website
No it’s not a security risk
It’s neither difficult nor expensive and you don’t need to be technical
You can’t always rely on the NSRA, NRA or social platforms to be available
Take responsibility for your own “shop window”