paintball club...help?

[pbguru89]

Hey me an 68magowner wanna start up a club at out school. I'm sure some of ya'll have started one also. I just got some questions,that need to be answered for the club constitution. aight here it goes. and please if u could refrain from giving smart a** or stupid comments. remember that teachers and principals are looking at this.

1)how much should annual dues; what will they be used for;what measures are in place in case someone qualifies for membership but can't afford dues.

2)does the member have to complete certain projects

3)why was your club established. what are your goals and the activities you plan to perform to accomplish them.

4)how will your club be involved with the community


thanks in advance

[mjs1217]

Hey bro, I'm trying to do the same thing at my High School next year. Look for my thread on it, entitled "6 Months to Go...Better Start Preparing".

Hope I helped,
-mjs

[pbguru89]

thnx man

[TheDoveDecends]

We got one started at my school earlier this year.. took a good bit of convincing but we did it..

1) We have no dues. We were going to get shirts and have fees for them.. but never got them made.

2) We dont make anyone do anything. The club is basically a democracy and everyone is equal.

3) We established the club primarily for organization. We all knew there were a good amount of people that played different types of paintball at our school.. and we wanted a club to bring them all together. We thought about having a few fund raisers, but never got around to them. One of our ideas was to have a small tournament with another school.. and have an entry fee and small prizes.

4) Another fundraiser idea was car washes, etc.. Theres plenty of ways to become involved in your local community though, ie.. trash pick up days, car washes, etc.

Hope that helps.. just remember to express the safety in the sport.. and show statistics if you have to, they always help.

[silentdeath55]

I tried organizing a district wide tournament, but got absolutly no help from the field I wanted it to be at, or anyone at the school. Not to mention the administration at my school is extremely weird. I got our VP to o.k. it (he actually was in the navy and loved the idea) but the people he had to o.k. it with were not to keen on the idea.

I'm still trying though. Good luck to you!

[SuiciDal Sn Y p ER]

School woudn't allow a paintball club :(

they told me i had to get a teacher to sponsor it, and that all the club spaces were filled up already.

But, if you were to start a club DPB would be a great thing to do when you're not at the field

[InexactMelissa]

Originally posted by pbguru89
1)how much should annual dues; what will they be used for;what measures are in place in case someone qualifies for membership but can't afford dues.

2)does the member have to complete certain projects

3)why was your club established. what are your goals and the activities you plan to perform to accomplish them.

4)how will your club be involved with the community


Well, I'm no longer in school, but since I do have a son in school I'll throw out a couple of comments.

Regarding dues: I only participated in one club at school, but I don't remember any of them being required to collect dues. I also don't remember any necessary requirements for membership other than the desire to join the club. Are these factors required by your school to officially recognize the club? How will the dues be spent - on stuff like photocopy fees and supplies? What, as a member, do I get for my dues (newsletter, t-shirt, etc.)?

Regarding required projects: In order to answer this, I would have to ask what the 'mission statement' of your club would say. For example, is the point of the club to teach safety in paintball, or is it to expand the sport into the community, or is it to provide a competitive or educational resource for its members? If you intend it to be a community service type club (like the Lions, Kiwanis, Elks, whatever) then I doubt you would require the members to complete a project. However, if it was something more educational, character building, or sporting, you may want to require that members do something like chair an event, participate in hosting a community outreach event, or attend X number of competitive events.

Regarding community service: Again, this would depend on your mission statement. For example, a football team that was mainly there for educational/athletic development could say that they are providing an entertainment resource for the community that attends games, or the football team may sponsor something like the "Central High JV Football Coat Drive" once a year, while the Spanish club may sign up to have its members tutor English as a second language classes at the local library on an ongoing basis.

To summarize, I think your questions are all on the right track. What it comes down to is that you have to come up with a basic outline and start expanding on it to fill in the details. While the "hows" and the "wheres" may not be too hard, the "whys" really need to be there first. This is the basis of a good organizational (business) plan, and if you can do this, you will learn a great deal and probably impress your school administrators.

Good luck in your efforts, and if you would like any help, please feel free to contact me.

:)

edit: you may also want to try to track down Chris Rhael (sp?) regarding the organizational structure of the college paintball leagues.

[Methylphenidate]

silentdeath55 what feild did you try and have it at????

[felony]

Originally posted by InexactMelissa

edit: you may also want to try to track down Chris Rhael (sp?) regarding the organizational structure of the college paintball leagues.

I do agree with this comment. Or at least go here and go to the forums for more help. There are alot of college kids posting there and I am sure some will be willing to lead you in a good direction.

http://www.collegelist.college-paintball.com/

Dues can be good and bad. Our college club has 20 dollar dues @ the beginning of the semester. That money is supposed to go to different parts of the club. These are media (website, and posters and stuff on campus) and I believe the rest goes to money for gas (IE practices). PLEASE get a good treasurer for your money and what not. It makes the other people feel safe with giving money to the club for whatever reason.

Good luck !

dan

[CoFFeY[NiTrO]]

Some kids tried to start one at my Highschool....me and my friends went there and it was a bunch of kids talking trash about my Xmag and think they are BA's with their 'tourniment quality spyders.'

[tyrion2323]

Hey man,

I recently started a college team and club. It was difficult due to my school's policy on paintball markers, but we worked things out by storing our equipment off-campus. I'm guessing that you're talking about high school. Here are my solutions:

1)Dues should really just be something simple, like $15 for the team shirt/jersey.

2)I would hold weekly practices. Attendance counts.

3)It was established because I had the will to work hard to create it. There are always ways to work with the school administration. You don't need your paintball equipment ON CAMPUS, so really you just need school endorsement for the club itself, not to endorse the sport.

4)Try to have a monthly project. We volunteer for field maintenance and reffing.


Jacob

[sbpyro]

We had a club in college.

The club's reason for existing was to promote the sport of paintball. The club has a mailing list which we would announce upcoming events (usually it was a post of planning to play this weekend anyone interest/need ride). We were able to get funding for our recreational activities (paintball trip open to the entire university) but not for a tourney team (they deemed it was not open to the entire student population).

As for activities:

Went to a local field to help them rebuild, in return we got reduced field fees.

A paintball trip open to the entire university. Anyone interested needed to sign up and pay a deposit. (very necessary to have a deposit since it provides a monetary tie to the event)

General post of when we were going and if anyone needed a ride.

We had a sponsorship with TASO but then National paintball bought them out and things were never the same.

As for a constitution. The club constitution states that members could be students, faculty, and alumni. Had we followed the constitution of another club we could have included next of kin of members. (thats how they keep a membership of over a couple of thousand but they also have a couple of hundred active members.

Things that you should know it was a pain to get money our of my university and we were not well liked by the peace mongers.

[Z-man]

I founded one in high school and college with little trouble.

Now I did the private high school thing so I am certain the rules differ but all I did was ask the powers that be, who gave clubs the thumbs up/down.

After that you have to convince them that your club is worthy. You can use the same arguments for both high school and college and I personally like my first one the best.

1- Paintball will benefit your campus because it allows the male population to vent whatever energy/aggression/hormone imbalances off campus. This means that the campus will remain more calm and conducive to a learning atmosphere!

2- a paintball club would help maintain a mature and safe group of paintballers. Some people go out and buy up the Wal-Mart special just for shooting cars. The club would only play in areas specified for paintball and require members to abide by all safety precautions (list them if you think they will be impressed/care)

3- Paintball is a sport that both young and old, large and small, can play on an equal level. People who may not be in good shape can enjoy paintball just as much as the best athletes and what's more it's exercise that's fun!

Make sure you play up the part that a Paintball Club will take the rowdy hyper kids and drain their energy completely (an especially effective argument for dorms in college).

As luck would have it, I started pushing the paintball club right after the whole Columbine thing and I was STILL able to get permission to have my own mailing list and online forum on the campus. No funding though ;).

College was a bit better. They were much more open to the idea and actually got us $500 a semester which could be used toward transportation/paint/entry fees etc.

As for rule and stuff. We kept is simple.

- No firing, brandishing playing with the markers on campus. Gotta keep a good image.

- When we play, you must have a mask and a barrel sock. Tanks must be in hydro.

- We play ONLY at fields or on a club member’s own property after receiving written consent by the landowners. Again, gotta be legit.

- Funds are distributed on based on who plays. Say we set 3 dates for games during a semester. That means 500/3= ~$165 each game is available. If only 5 people can make it that game. That 165 is divided equally; if 20 people show then it’s divided equally. Members are responsible to cover whatever remaining costs there are.

And that was really it. We did not have club dues or some "rite of passage" you had to complete. Just make sure that you abide by the club rules or I the president will have to beat you to death. Remember 1 person can ruin it for everyone else.

[sbpyro]

Zman posted some great points about rules for the club.
There are also some issues we had with the university when ever we organized trip that used university funds. The major pain was that the university required the field to be insured for I believe 1 million per person (sorry has been a while and a bad experience) and that the Unviersity be the beneficiary on the insurance. (Most of the local fields had to add them on for the day at an additional cost). Otherwise the university would not release the funds to pay the fields. (mind you we had better relationship with the fields than with the university.
This brings up my last point. It is great having a club at your college, but remember there is a lot of work into it also. There was paperwork for keeping office space, constant updating of officers, budget proposals, budget reviews, budget requests, and paperwork for planned trips with school funds was the worse.
In all it was worthwhile, but I still hated the amount of hoops we had to jump through.