VTcnix

This was my 21st birthday cake (also coincided with my 100th jump) Such a waste of a beautiful cake

I think that this was an excellent post for ideas on skydiving club success. I'm the current president of the Skydiving Club of Virginia Tech and in the past couple of years we've been implementing alot of different ideas and have seen our club membership skyrocket. 1. I think a website is VERY important. It is a very easy thing to advertise and a great way for whuffos to get information on skydiving and the club with minimal effort from the club. We were able to get an easy-to-remember name from a masking service and use the internet space the school gives us. Our website is a work in progress but it is up at www.skydiveVT.com. There are alot of cool college club websites out there. 2. We have 2 listserves. One we put anyone who has expressed interest in making a jump and to which we only send out general information about upcoming meetings. The other is for members and anyone wanting to be on it, alot of trash talking, jokes, pictures etc are sent over but its fun and a great way for club members to bond with each other. 3. We also have been meeting at a bar which I think is a great thing because it's casual as skydiving club meetings should be.. I haven't asked for discounts but am going to look into that 4. We hold seperate interest meetings,.. that way we can go over the basics of the club and of making your first jump without boring our experienced members. 5. We hold weekly "conference nights" basically dinner at a different person's house each week and everyone chips in $5. It's always good fun and gives the on-campus kids a home cooked meal 6. We offer members who go through AFF free coaching once they are on coaching status. We are able to do this because we have club members who are certified coaches who are willing to give back to the club... it really cuts down on the cost to the student.. and it's been a good thing because we have had members go through our coaching program and now are giving coach jumps themselves 7. Our club has 3 rigs that we have acquired over the years (partly with help from funding from the school) These rigs are available to our members at a cost of $5 /jump (this is about $25 less than the DZ charges) to cover the maintenance costs on the rig. This helps alot with lowering the cost for new jumpers. 8. We offer free packing classes. Everyone's got to learn to pack, and so we get people together for packing classes during the week. 9. Trips!!! I think this is so important for forming bonds between your club members.. this year we've made a trip down to the farm for one of their $129 weekends, gone to Bridge Day in WV and upcoming we will be going to Westpoints Halloween Boogie and down to Florida for Collegiates. These trips are always fun and cramming 6 skydivers into a small car really cuts the costs of gas. 10. We held our back to school boogie for the first time this year and it was a beautiful thing. A chance for all our members and alumni to get together and start the year off right. We held events like 4way scrambles, hit-and-chug and all tech 8 ways. 11.Tandem Raffle- we did this a couple of years ago,.. had the dropzone donate a tandem, made raffle cards and gave them to members to sell @ like 2$ a peice and kept that going for about 2-3 weeks. It was a great way to get our name out and we also used the list of people who signed up for raffle tickets to put on our whuffo contact list. We ended up bringing out alot of tandems from this and made like $500. 12. FUNDING FROM YOUR SCHOOL!!!! I put this last because i think its one of the most important. This is an avenue you MUST check out. Our school and I assume most schools have money they allocate to clubs. We have to go through an annual funding process where we request money for certain things and then we have a hearing and the school decides how much money to allocate us. The school loves us because we are such a novel club. In the past we've gotten money for new gear, gear maintenance (ex: cypresses, repacks etc), USPA dues (a real hassle), money to go to Collegiates down in Florida etc... Because of this money we are able to offer our members the opportunity to compete down in florida for next to nothing... We just started doing this a couple of years ago and have been amazed by the receptiveness of the school... Anyway that was all I could think of right now,.. if you want to contact me my email is cnix@vt.edu Also wanted to know if anyone's been able to do a demo @ their school,.. Vah Tech's not too enthusiastic about it. Cheers, Christie President of the Skydiving Club of Virginia Tech Fallatio # 4 Infructus #2