[r9tbayfC]

Curious as to how other clubs go about recruiting new members. Do you go through work friends, church, etc.? Or do you advertise? What works best?

Our club would like to attract new members and I'm open to any ideas.

Thank you!

[nakeseireo]

Curious as to how other clubs go about recruiting new members. Do you go through work friends, church, etc.? Or do you advertise? What works best?

Our club would like to attract new members and I'm open to any ideas.

Thank you!

We run a beginners class through the local parks and rec department, do demos at 6-8 cultural events during the year, and I lie about the chicks, glory and fine odors a lot.

Never mention the foot blisters or the bruises.

[bapimporb]

My dojo gets members mostly through word of mouth. A member tells a few of his friends about it and invites them to practice. They may or may not stick with it but I think it helps for them to have a friend who is already an established member.

I suppose you could tell everyone to try and bring a guest to practice.

[MaugleeRobins]

Internet presence, demos, word of mouth, flyers... we try to take advantage of all opportunities to spread the word. We have never paid for advertising but we have had small newspaper articles and also articles posted on web pages of local organizations (such as University newsletters etc)

[FinanseMikky]

Most of the time people come to us and we don't do too much in terms of active recruiting. We put on a demo here and there at the request of various local organizations (schools, Japanese interest groups, etc.) and that sometimes get's a couple people here and there to at least come and check out a practice or two. The other benefit being we're pretty much the only dojo in our area, unless people don't mind driving at least an hour to other dojos (Stroudsburg, Hummelstown) or driving into Philly. Over the past year we've increased membership by another half just by interested invididuals coming by and finding us on their own. One way to look at it is that if people are really interested they'll find you. Demos and whatnot are a great way of putting your dojo name out there as well and usually local Japanese organizations and schools are a great way to go.

[grinaJanoDant]

We don't really actively recruit, but folks seem to find us for whatever reason.
However, here's what we do (or what we've done):

-The head instructor owns the only martial arts supply store in town, so some people hear about the class through that avenue.

- We've been able to get the local newspaper to do two or three stories on the club over the past two years and fortunately, they've been fairly ok articles with good pictures in a prominent section of the paper (rather than being relegated to a paragraph on the back page).

- There's also internet presence and I know for a fact that some people just do a google search and find us that way. (What causes them to google memphis+kendo is a mystery to me, though).

- The community center we work out at has a generic flyer for the class, as well as a brochure of all the things they have to offer, so we get some notice that way, too. Some people might show up for something at the community center and just find us that way -- and it helps if they show up on nights when class is going on.

- The community center also does some kind of once-a-year thing at a small fair of sorts, and we always do a demo for that. (I don't think we've gotten too many students from that, though). We might normally do two or three demos a year a various events (who normally contact US instead of us contacting them)...

- Then there's the "out-of-nowhere" scenario, such as just recently, we were contacted by a teacher at an elementary school who last year worked a summer in Japan teaching English. Got to see a kendo dojo and upon returning to the States, decided to introduce her class to a little Japanese culture. Asked us to do two back-to-back demos for their entire elementary school (approx 250 kids).

There's some word-of-mouth as well.

Overall, I would say that internet presence is probably the biggest factor.
It's how people find things in general... We do have a dot.com (or dot.net) site, but nobody ever keeps up with it and it exists because one of our guys decided to pay for it himself. With free blog servers (like blogger.com), no club really has an excuse for not having SOMETHING on the internet.

[Aniplinipsync]

Lonely hearts section - would like to meet, GSOH.

[Sydaycymn]

Trying to get new members for a martial art like Kendo is a really tough, as we all already know. Doing demonstrations may or may not net any measurable amount of members depending on where you present yourself, the kind of people you're presenting yourself to and how the planets are lined up. There was one time that the club I was with at Purdue where one demonstration at the Student Organization fair netted us well over 35 new members (with the predicted dwindlage), but most demonstrations haven't yielded similar results. You could probably see about doing things at Anime conventions or Japanese festivals, though I think that most are there just to see what you do and are not much interested in joining, especially when there are so many variables involved compared to the strip-mall Karate dojos.

I would probably just suggest that you just let people know that Kendo exists and your dojo exists. Tango has a good point in that an internet presence would be one of the better bets. The site doesn't need to be complicated or anything, it just needs information on what kendo is, where and when you guys practice, what they need to start off with, some general written idea on what practice is about and any relevant links (pictures, video, etc) to get your point across. And something like Blogger would be a nice way to at least have club news on there that anyone can follow. And I think that the most important thing to do is to just make sure you're easily available for questions and prompt with any email responses to create better rapport with the outside world and possibly gain new members.

To me, it seems like most that tend to come in just happen to fall on the information one day and want to give it a shot (happened to me).

[Siliespiriulk]

If what I'm about to say is offensive, please remember that it's not intended that way. I'm well aware of the... heritage... of kendo, so I know that money grubbing is considered bad form.

That said, from a purely business perspective, and not from the view of a martial art at all, it makes sense to have clout. If Paddy sets up a supermarket in New York, he can rely on the name of the franchise (Walmart, Sainsburys, whatever).

Could the kendo federation help to co-ordinate things here to increase awareness of kendo? is that unacceptable to you guys?

[Green_Monkey23]

The vast majority of people are unaware of the various federations. So while the federations could (and should) help to promote kendo, belonging to them doesn't do the same thing as buying a business franchise, ie there's no name recognition. By the time a potential student gets around to finding out the federation name, we've already done our job, promotion-wise - he knows about the club, is interested in kendo, and maybe asks about the federation to check legitimacy. Although to be frank, I've never had a single student ask about our federation ties or credentials.

[Pheddytrourry]

The vast majority of people are unaware of the various federations. So while the federations could (and should) help to promote kendo, belonging to them doesn't do the same thing as buying a business franchise,

I had the feeling that you were going to say that, Gendzwill sensei. In HK the federation is everything and decides everything. But then again HK is copyrighted to Na, kwangjangnim, and he in effect owns the art. The federation helps all teachers to get new members. (Please see this as explaining my views, rather than trying to discuss my art.)

At what age group do people typically start kendo? If there is an 'age' when people start, could kendo dojos work with other groups who deal with that age group?

For example, if, say, typical newbies are 16 years olf, could kendo dojos specifically 'target' as it were youth clubs rather than doing general displays and demonstrations in front of an audience?

[XiWm9O9S]

I can't speak to other countries but here in Canada the federation is in control of a lot of things but doesn't do much to help recruiting at the club level. They are Toronto-based and currently in Toronto I believe they have all the new recruits they can handle and more.

As far as when people start, well there's a variety of ages. In places where there is a large Japanese population, the kids start pretty young, placed in the dojo by their parents. Here we see a lot of people starting at around college age, and we do poster at the local university. We get our supply of kids from the fact that we are part of the YMCA, so parents just see us in the program guide and ask little Johnny if he wants to try kendo. I haven't found demos at schools to be particularly successful.

[Queuerriptota]

We get our supply of kids from the fact that we are part of the YMCA, so parents just see us in the program guide and ask little Johnny if he wants to try kendo. I haven't found demos at schools to be particularly successful.

I'd imagine that lots of demos are seen more as entertainment, that is a display of this 'strange' art for the entertainment of the public. Note that 'strange didn't mean 'bad'.

I don't know how to promote kendo. I know that HK (as opposed to HDGD) is more about word of mouth, but then you have to have interested people.

I think that this is cultural, in that now we live in the age of Nintendo DS, and lots of kids don't want to train in a diccicult, taxing, smelly (sorry), thing that has not real immediate rewards.

[neotheMit]

A good website that is updated to demonstrate that the club actually exists is HUGE for advertising. We had no site for awhile, and grew very slowly. Then we got a website with time, location, but limited other information and saw very little change. Once the site was revamped and updated periodically our numbers doubled. Internet presence is huge and little changes to websites help to show the club hasn't disappeared while the website awkwardly lives on.

[cmruloah]

Our dojo in Salinas, founded in 1970, has suffered declining membership recently. We have the typical attrition among newcomers, of course. Then there are military participants from nearby towns, including families with multiple members, that eventually move away after 12-18 months. Several of our long-term youths have gone or are going away to college as well. We haven't had new kids join us in four years until very recently. It will take some time to bring the two new ones up to speed, assuming they don't drop out. Some of our recent practices have had more sensei than students. On the plus side, it's nice to have individual attention from the likes of Onitsuka sensei and the others. On the down side, our shrinking numbers don't help our own kendo to improve.

Our dojo is a large, modern gym but it is located in a seedy neighborhood on the periphery of an area of the city that has garnered media attention for its gang violence. Just last week someone was shot in the alley on the next block. Needless to say, this does not help to attract new people, especially those with young children. The demographic make-up of the city, a hard-working class population suffering through the recession, is not an ideal pool to draw recruits from.

So we are trying a second location 20 miles away in Monterey located in a safe, lakeside neighborhood at an underutilized gymnasium of the YMCA, which is centrally located just off a major highway within a 10-12 minute drive of six surrounding towns that have a state university, a community college, military schools and a large international post-grad university. We have had people from this area inquire into kendo but don't want to go to Salinas on a regular basis so, in general, the demographic may be better for recruiting. Maybe like business, it's location, location, location. We'll see. The dojo is funding a three-month long trial for twice-a-week practice.

Here is our recruiting flyer.

[SarSerceSaice]

Location is absolutely important. Before we hooked up with the Y, we were wandering from place to place, booking space with the school system. Having a steady, central location has been very good to us. Being associated with the Y gives us a stamp of approval as well, we don't look like some fly by night operation.

[warrgazur]

Our dojo is a large, modern gym but it is located in a seedy neighborhood...

Here is our recruiting flyer.

Although it sucks in terms of trying to recruit new people when they are afraid to go to the seedy neighborhood, it is kinda nice to be able to contribute to the community and give people a positive activity to do instead of bad stuff. Does only remaining there make recruiting harder, yes, but if it could be used as a satelite dojo for once a week practices or something to that effect at some community center then it could help to give a positive outlet to people who need it.

Just a random thought...

[Thifiadardivy]

The Salinas dojo will remain practicing kendo in Salinas as it has for 39 years every Monday and Thursday. We are not abandoning the location. We are just adding another venue in Monterey to attract people who will not travel to Salinas. We have always welcomed everyone at Salinas and continue to do so. We've even tried outreach programs through schools - nada. Being a part of the Buddhist Temple, the gym has other positive uses, for example as housing for homeless men every Wednesday in rotation among several local churches who share housing the other days of the week.

[pushokalex1]

We have a website which is linked to not only the mian BKA website but as many local sporting/leisure sites as we find.

We also have cards in shop windows - this works quite well actually.

Notices in sports halls in the region (this not so well which I find odd really).

Word of mouth can work, but often people do not stay long if they have come along via this route. Anyone else find this is the case?

Best form of advertising is local press but this can be expensive, so our 'cunning plan' is to pester one of the local rags (different one each year) to take pictures of someone winning something or passing a grading. This tends to generate the most interest and gets quite a few new members.

But the best way.. is Hollywood . We got lots of interest when Last Samurai was out And from the 20+ who showed up we have kept two ( but a few have only left because they have been posted abroad). So come Spielberg,do something about Ronin or Musashi or Tesshu.

[machpamb]

Well, I once had to do an assignment for school and I did the assignment about kendo. So I did a presentation in front of the whole school and it raised a lot of interest. I told a lot of people about kendo and now they finally have a clear view on what kendo really is. But sadly we didn't got any new members. But I still think it's a good way to show kendo as a sport to younger people. They immediately get a good impression of what it really is.