Chard Angling Club

Provided a more efficient way to collect payments, empowered members to take control of their angling experience, more established online presence, significantly reduced secretary workload.

Chard Angling Club was formed to support local anglers keen on pleasure fishing and competing in organised fishing matches. The club has fishing rights for Chard Reservoir, Perry Street Pond and Sadborow Pond. The Club is run by a committee that manages and maintains the venues, organises matches and maintains fish stock levels.

Running Chard Angling Club was very hectic and I found it near impossible to keep track of everything. I had to manage paper-based renewals, in which our members would have to complete membership forms and send them to us via post with a cheque that I’d then need to take to the bank. Then, I’d need to manually keep track of who’s actually paid to renew; this process fell victim to human error more often than not.

After reflecting on all of the responsibilities I had – engaging with members, maintaining the venue and so on – I realised it wasn’t sustainable for things to continue this way. In fact, it was probably limiting the club’s growth. I needed a system of some sort that would dramatically decrease my workload and allow me to focus more on the club and its members rather than paperwork and chasing payments.

It was certainly great to see that Clubmate is run by a team that are keen anglers themselves. They’re familiar with what it’s like being on an angling committee and so completely understood that in those low moments it sometimes feels like a thankless task!

The software itself seemed simple to use and most importantly, addressed each of the issues I was having. It would allow me to collect payments online as well as through traditional means and have a searchable online database of all of our members and their details. Just having payments, membership details, member information and communications in one place instead of using several different systems would make a world of difference for our club.

Although I knew Clubmate was the solution we needed, I was concerned about getting sign-off from the rest of the committee because few of us had experience using online software and so I worried if learning a brand new system would be a big ask for them.