Sailing clubs around Australia are making big gains through converting casual SailPass users into ongoing financial contributors of the club.

Through the introduction of SailPass, clubs are able to collect the contact information of the many casual competitors enjoying the beauty of sailing through their participation in club racing.

It is this contact information that clubs are now leveraging to implement membership recruitment campaigns. Once on the club’s database, these casual participants become the hottest of prospects for communication around full club membership as well as other club offerings including events, regattas and merchandise. 

A recent news article at https://www.sailing.org.au/news/changes-to-rule-46-and-crew-membership/ announced that from 1 January 2021 all crew in any race will be required to be a member of an affiliated club and registered with Australian Sailing.

Clubs of all sizes have pre-empted the change and have already begun asking casual and irregularly participating sailors to become members of their clubs. Two of these clubs are the Mackay Sailing Club (MSC) in Queensland and the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club (SASC) in Sydney.

Only a couple of years ago the SASC was down to about 360 members despite the hard work of committee members and their prime position on a spectacular waterway in Australia’s largest city. Of those 360 members, about 90% were boat owners. Many crews participating at the club were going largely unaccounted for. Commodore Bruce Dover led a team through some challenging conversations about driving a positive change. The SASC decided to go down the path of creating a crew membership, implementing SailPass to capture short term and introductory memberships and set about educating skippers to getting their crew to sign up.

The result is that the SASC, a club with very little in the way of staff and large volunteer dependency, took about 145 names and after converting about half of those to crew membership, increased their membership from 360 to 430 people. They’ve shifted the ratio of female membership from around 7% to 15%. This shift in participation of women has led to a committee being formed at the club to push harder on increasing female membership.

The MSC, purely run by a small group of dedicated volunteers, was a club in considerable difficulty. Situated in a regional centre of Queensland and in severe financial distress, the fleet was depleted and the club down to about 50 members. Members were discussing letting the club fold. Led by Commodore Geoff Osborne, the club regrouped and set up sailing events to attract casual social sailors, a membership category to cater for these, and the use of SailPass to handle the registrations of the introductory members.

After taking 128 registrations for the introductory sailing, membership at the MSC now stands at 153. Whilst the club is admittedly offering remarkably low-cost membership options, this still represents a stunning conversion rate. 

With the full roll-out of SailPass now in full effect, the clubs who are adopting and implementing the technology are reaping the benefits. The South Brisbane Sailing Club has put 228 people through SailPass. Goolwa Aquatic Club attracting 180. Chelsea Yacht Club, around 84 new sign ups. The larger clubs have opportunity too. The Middle Harbour Yacht Club has issued over 1300 SailPasses, which at a cost of $5 per SailPass as well as the opportunity to convert these people into full membership (and other club offerings) has them well-placed to make the most of this significant club resource.

Read more about the change to rule 46 at https://www.sailing.org.au/news/faq-changes-to-rule-46/ and about SailPass at https://www.sailingresources.org.au/sailpass-home/.

For help getting your club set up contact your Regional Manager https://www.sailing.org.au/about/ourstaff/.