What a club is on SetMatcher, and who should make one
A club is an organisation rather than a group of friends: a register of members, membership types you name yourself, a committee of as many administrators as you like and exactly one owner who answers for it. The register is free at any size; what costs money is the size of the club’s events and putting the club on its own website.
A register, membership types, a committee and one owner. The register is free at any size.
A club is an organisation, not a bigger group
A group on SetMatcher has one administrator and that is the whole of its authority. A club has three rungs: a member, who reads the register and the club’s own pages; an administrator, who writes the club’s identity, its sports, its membership types and its register, and of whom there may be as many as the club likes; and the owner, who is an administrator in everything and is additionally the one row nobody may demote, remove or leave with.
That third rung is the point of the whole thing. Somebody has to answer for a club, so exactly one owner exists at every moment of a club’s life: the owner cannot leave and cannot be removed, and ownership changes only by being handed over and accepted. A club therefore never has two owners and never has none, which is what lets it outlive the committee that made it.
Who should make one
Anybody whose play outlives the people organising it. If the same group of four books a court every Tuesday, a group is right and a club would be paperwork. If there is a name above a door, a membership list that changes every season, more than one sport, or a committee that hands over every few years, a club is what you want.
The threshold is not a number of members. It is whether the organisation exists independently of whoever is currently running it, because that is the one thing a group cannot express: a group has an administrator, and if that person leaves there is nobody the group belongs to.
What the committee actually gets
Being on the committee makes somebody an administrator of every group the club owns, and of everything inside those groups: the tournaments, the leagues, the courts, the order of play and the desk. That is the practical difference from a pile of groups. A treasurer who joins in November can run the winter competition in December without anybody handing over a password.
A club also keeps one ranking per sport across everything it owns, so a member who plays in three of the club’s groups appears in that ranking once rather than three times. It has courts with a booking sheet its members keep, a lesson programme with instructors it appoints, and a map of its park; and it has a page of its own, with its logo, a cover photograph and one of four colour themes, which it may publish or keep to itself.
What a committee runs with it
Around the register sit the things a club does with its courts and its people.
Every one of them works on a phone at the side of a court, in six languages.
- The park map: the club’s ground on the aerial photograph, with every court at true size and a place a player can be told.
- The booking sheet: the courts a day at a time, booked by the members under rules the committee set once.
- Lessons and instructors: a season, groups that meet every week, a register, rained-off lessons owed back, and the ledger.
- The register, the committee and the club’s own page, which is where every club starts.
What it costs
Making a club, inviting members, keeping the register and running every event up to 16 entrants with every tool is free, at any size of club. A register of three hundred members costs nothing, and it never will: a club bringing its whole membership in is the best thing that can happen to a rating engine.
SetMatcher Club is €39.00 a month or €390.00 a year, and it buys three things: every event the club owns at any size with the whole event day for every administrator, the club’s ranking, fixtures, results and live board embedded on the club’s own website, and no advertising on any of the club’s pages for anybody at all. A club may try it once for 14 days, without a card.
What a committee decides first
What a committee wants to know before it moves its club: what a club is, what it costs, what a year looks like, how to move over, and how the register, the park map, the booking sheet and the lessons work.
- Members and the club pageThe register, the committee, the join links and the public page.
- The park mapCourts at true size on the real ground, halls with floor plans, and a way in.
- Court bookingsA day at a time, the club’s own rules, and a court closed with the reason on it.
- Lessons and instructorsA season, groups, a register, rained-off lessons owed back, and the money ledger.
- A club or a groupBoth free, both run events. The difference is authority and memory.
- What a club costsThe register is free at any size. €39.00 a month buys the big events and the embeds.
- A committee’s yearAutumn, winter, spring and summer, in the order a committee meets them.
- Moving a club overStart with the register, from the spreadsheet you already keep.
Where to read next
More on the subjects you have just read about.
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Free for players. Clubs get a register, a park map, court bookings and lessons.