To wonder how to start a club?

[corgiology]

Starting a dog lovers club for humans only (i.e no dogs)

I have got a venue (local pub) but wondered about:

Whether I need insurance? (not sure what for though as it is just for dog owners and I presume it falls under the pub insurance?)

What is a reasonable membership fee?

Do I need to take down anything other than contact details of members?

Sorry I've never done anything like this before and want to make sure I get it right first time

Just wondering if you've had much expression of interest for such a club?

What would you talk about at your club?

What are you going to do in the pub?

With no dogs aloud then I can only imagine a group of dog owners having an organised drink in the pub. Which isn't something you can ask for a membership fee for IMO. ditto contact details.

My plan is to have various topics that we all discuss and anyone can pitch in with topics they want to talk about

We will also have talks (hopefully!) from local professionals i.e. vets/groomers etc but this will be done in a hired venue where there is more space

I have had some interest in the club so far. I have advertised around town and am currently trying to generate social media interest.

Take a look at meetup.com- you can create a group there or see if a group similar to what you want already exists.

I belong to two clubs one is very informal (its a book club) - we don;t have membership fees and we meet in the snug of a local hotel which lets us use it in return for us all buying a coffee etc. It is just us no speakers.
The other cliub i belong to is an art club - we have speakers, we hire a room at the local community centre once a month, we have insurance (I think) the membership fee is £20 annually or £5 a session fro visitors (i.e. people who want to hear the talk) we pay our speakers between £60 and £100 depending (partly on what they demand) we make money by having exhibitions, weekly raffle and our fees.

I think you club falls somewhere in between these two - you possibly wouldn;t be thinking of paying speakers as much as us (when we first set up speakers were actually failry willing to do it for free until we made enough to start paying them) I;m not sure how hoaving speakers in a pub woudl work - is the pub happy about that, are you in a private room in the pub or will others using it have to hear the talks?

Your local library might be able to give you some tips or at least put you in touch with others in the area who run clubs and might be able to answer some of your questions.

Our art club has a committee and rules and all that kind of stuff - which might be much more formal than what you want, although it does help to have things written donw if people start arguing the toss about how things should be done (and some people will always do this !!) my book club is much smaller and we just do our own thing - much more relaxed. So really a question of deciding exactly what kind of thing you want - if there are only going to be a few members then you can keep things pretty informal but if you think it will be vry popular you have to start thinking baout thevenue and safety etc. and if you are taking fees you need a treasurer of some sort as people are entitled to see what their membership money is being spent on. HTh

I don't know why I put 'I think' - we do have insurance.

Thanks KurriKurri. That is very insightful.

The talks would be done in the local community centre so different location but that would be hired so I would need to take money then which goes straight to the venue.

I guess I don't need to take membership fees- I just didn't want to not take them and then realise I needed to.

I want to keep it informal but if I do arrange a talk hopefully we will get lots of interested people.

I hopeit goes really well for you corgi - it's great way for people to get together and share thier interests. I forgot to mention that we print out a4 posters advertising meetings (and naming the speaker and topic if we have one) which we all take and put on our gates or in local shops, and we also advertise in the local free paper -the Mercury (don;t know if you have a mercury in your area but probably something similar) Don't be down hearted if it takes a little while to take off - we started out very small for quite a while - but gradually word spreads and friends bring other friends along, and now we've got a waiting list for member ship. I'd guess lots of people are interested in dogs, so hopefully you will get plenty of interest