So you want to start a Disc Dog Club.
Maybe there are no clubs in your area and you are going to blaze the trail and grow the sport. Maybe there’s a club in your area, but you think there’s room for another. There are many reasons to start a club, and many ways to go about it, depending on what your ultimate goals are. We are going to look at how to do it, how not to do it, and help you determine the best path for you!
Let’s start by taking a look at what a Disc Dog “club” really is.
Definition of Club: 1. an association or organization dedicated to a particular interest or activity.
We usually think of a Disc Dog Club as a group of disc doggers that have meet ups or play dates, organize competitions and training, and perhaps charge members yearly dues. The group generally consists of like minded individuals in an area that are connected by their love of dogs and disc.
If you want to start your own club, one of the first things to consider is the size of club you want to have. Do you just want to get together with a few friends and organize some fun events? Or do you want to build a big club that can host world qualifiers and multiple events throughout the year? Having a general idea of how big you intend to scale your club can help with some decisions in the beginning. Of course you may start out small but as the club grows you may decide to take it to the next level.
One really important thing to know as you set out to start a club; It’s a lot of work. Yes it’s fun and rewarding, but to do it right is a lot of work.
First Steps
Let’s look at how we might start a club in Des Moines, Iowa.
We have a dog who loves to play disc, and we have a friend who’s dog is also interested. The first step would be to see if we can generate some interest in the area from other folks whose dogs play, or who are at least interested in checking it out.
A great way to do this is by setting up a “play date” or “meet up” where everyone can get together and have some fun with their dogs. But wait – how and where can we do this? Well, this isn’t always as easy as we would hope.
The best option is if one of you have a big backyard where you can play. If that’s not the case, you will need to find a park or space with some flat and safe ground where you can have a dog off leash. Hopefully, it will be a place away from busy roads with easy access to parking.
You may want to contact the city or county parks administration and explain what you want to do. In many cases, they may want to charge you a fee to rent the park. They may also expect you to have insurance. However, you might be able to trade out some work at the park; picking up trash or painting picnic tables etc – for an occasional use of the park for your dogs.
Many parks have various public events, so offering to bring a few dogs out to do a demo for their event is also a great trade off for park use. Getting to know the parks people is VERY beneficial, so try to get on their good side!
Once you have a park or space you can use, it’s time to pick a day and time for your get together, like three weeks from this Saturday at 10:00 am.
You might want to create a facebook group or page to get things going for your burgeoning club. This will give you a great place to post an event with details about your meetup. You can also do other things to get the word out like hanging a flyer in local pet stores and contacting other dog groups in the area such as agility groups.
Before you have your play date, it is a good idea to jot down some ground rules even if you don’t have “official” club documents yet. Having an organized play date is much more effective than just a day of chaos.
Some things you may want to stipulate:
- One dog off leash at a time. This keeps things manageable and safe for everyone.
- Let people know to bring a crate, water, discs, (if they have any) and a lawn chair.
- Remind everyone to please pick up after their dog.
- Be sure and point out, this is a new group. It’s casual and fun! New people are welcome!
Map out what you plan to do. For example you may start things off with an introduction session where you go around the group and introduce yourselves and your dog. Then each team can take a turn throwing to their dog for a couple of minutes. Then you can discuss, answer questions and get to know each other. This last point is an important one!!
For many disc doggers, the friendships they develop and the camaraderie they have with each other is their favorite part of the sport. Do what you can to foster that friendly attitude from the start in your club – this will pay off in the long run!
So if your first play date goes well, and you have a few people show up, it’s time to set up another one. At this point you can start to think about and discuss what you see as a possible future for the club.
And of course – work on that cool club logo!
Club Structure
How you structure and organize the legal/official side of the club can determine where you eventually take it.
First, let me say there is no one specific way to approach this. There are clubs that are run by one person or a team of people. Clubs can be loosely put together, be LLCs or a charitable non-profit 501(c)(3). (There are several kinds of 501 oranizations in the U.S. – so if you decide to go this route, you should see which would best fit what you do based on your club’s mission and activities – consulting with an expert in this area can save you a lot of time.) You should look at all the options and consider which you might want to pursue. The important thing is to avoid letting this bog you down or keep you from moving forward with your group! You can work all of this out as you are growing the club, but it is a good idea to think about it along the way. Figuring it out sooner than later will help keep your focus on the fun part of playing with your dogs!
Regardless of whether you choose to run the club with your friend, or formally organize a 501(c)(3), the one thing you should be ready for, is jumping in and doing lots of work. It takes a lot of work to make a club successful. The key is, don’t wait for someone else to do things. If something needs to be done, just do it! That is what moves a club forward – hard work and willingness to do whatever the tasks are.
Helpful Documents
Here are some various documents you can download and then customize to suit your club’s specific needs. Just right click on each one and “save as.”
These are just examples to help get you going, and are not meant to be legal documents. You can speak with an attorney to get exact wording you need to protect your club.
Funding
Once you have a few folks interested in being a part of the club, you may find you need some funds. Maybe you need to rent the park or pay for a website. Once you start having play dates regularly, you will want to look into getting club insurance, which can be expensive.
Somewhere along the way, you may want to start a checking account for the club. Regardless of how you structure your club, you will likely need to separate club money from your own. It will make it much easier to track for accounting and taxes.
Some ways a club can generate funds:
1. Membership dues. Yearly dues can help give you a few bucks to get things started.
2. T-Shirts and Merchandise such as discs. This one is tricky because it may take money to buy the stuff to start with. One option, is if you can get people to do “pre” orders and pay in advance. However, a less complicated option, and sometimes a more profitable one, is for someone to loan the money to the club to buy the shirts. My best advice on this is to have a cool logo, find someone to design some cool shirts that people will want to buy – then keep them affordable. You want club members to all wear your shirts all the time as that’s great advertising!
3. Running Competitions. One of the best ways to make money as a club is by having competitions. If you can get 15 people out to play at an event, you can make money. Of course everyone that competes will want to buy a T-shirt and a couple more discs with your cool logo on them… so it’s a snowball effect once you get everything in place.
4. Demos. (Keep an eye out for our upcoming article on organizing demos for your club) This may take a little time, but once you have a few people in your club who are playing well, you will likely get asked to do a demo somewhere. For example, this may start with a local shelter asking you to come out and exhibit your Frisbee dog skills for their fundraiser. Many of these are free – but still good to do as club activities and are a great way to attract new members! When you have done a few, you may get asked to do a birthday party or other small event where you can charge a couple hundred dollars. I think it is important to put that money in the club fund. (We’ll talk about that later.)
5. Other Fundraisers. You can do other things to raise money for the club like any other group might do. A car wash – bake sale – dog wash – garage sale – it can be anything you can think of to get the group together. Have some fun, and make some money for the club!
Helpful Stuff
Besides the documents I mentioned, there are a few other items that will really help you as you start to have play dates and then eventually competitions. Start small with a few of the first items, then as your club grows, continue down the list to step up your game!
- Auto-timers! (Download your Free Auto-timers HERE)
- Cones – Flat cones or tall cones
- Marker paint (A marking paint wand is helpful)
- 300 foot tape measure
- 500 feet of string
- Stakes for marking field with string (Tent stakes work great)
- Stopwatch
- Clipboards and Pens
- Minimum – small Bluetooth speaker (So you can play Automatic start timers)
- Next step – Small PA speaker and mic
- Ultimate – PA with two speakers on stands and a mixer and mic
- Flags and stakes to flag off the field
- Club pop up tent (You may want 2 or more)
- Chairs and folding tables for the tent
- Trailer with your cool Club logo on it!
Club Insurance
Club insurance is one of the necessary evils of Disc Dog clubs. Liability insurance can cover you if someone gets hurt at your event etc. Of course, as with any kind of insurance, there are a lot of variables and different circumstances that you need to be aware of. So please research options before you buy. Talk to some other clubs to see who they are currently using for their insurance needs.
Parks may require you to have insurance before they will rent a field to you. Sometimes you may have to list them as additional insured, which may cost you extra money. There is also event insurance that can be needed in some special instances if you are holding a large event.
One big thing you can do as you are starting your club, is go to as many events by other clubs as you can. Even if you have to travel, go enter other Disc Dog events. It’s fun, but, what I really want you to do is pay attention to how they do things! Watch what they do right that you want to take back to your club. Also, watch what they maybe are not doing right that you want to make sure your club avoids. You can learn a ton by watching how other clubs do things!
I keep talking about how running a club is a lot of work, and that is true. If you are one of the leaders of the club, the harder you work and the more willing you are to do any job that needs done, the more you will see others volunteer. Volunteering and working are contagious. If you just sit around and wait for someone else to do it, chances are nobody will. But if you jump up and start working, you will see others join in. It is just the nature of everyone pitching in and helping out for the common good.
This brings up another point. I can only relate how we have done it with our club (the Kansas City Disc Dogs) – but I feel this has been a big factor in our success. The leaders in our club all treat themselves exactly like any other club member. We all pay the same yearly membership dues, we all pay the same as any club member when we buy T-shirts or discs, and none of us take any money for doing any work for the club. When we do demos that we get paid for, our best teams take no money for them. It all goes back into the club. Our general mantra is “Club first” on all of these things and that has really fostered a great environment where we have tons of amazing volunteers all helping out. We’re all in this together – and that is pretty cool!
Once you have a few people that are getting together regularly, you may want to drill down deeper on your club’s structure. Depending on how you decide to structure your club, you can assign tasks or jobs (these can come with official titles like “President” and “Treasurer,” or you can just talk about who does what.) You may have a club where you will have elections and vote for who will fill these positions. Once again, that is all dependent on how you decide to run your club.
Earlier I mentioned setting up a Facebook group. The one key to that being successful is to keep it active! When someone asks a question or posts something, make sure you are quick to answer. Same for any Twitter or Instagram accounts – just be present!
Another thing that I have seen really help encourage participation is pictures!! If anyone in the club is into photography, and is willing to come to play dates and events and take some Disc Dog pictures, that is awesome! Post lots of pics on your Facebook page. We ALL love to see pictures of our pups in action!
To keep a strong camaraderie in the club, it helps to do other things together besides disc dogging!
Invite club members to a paint party to paint pictures of their dogs!
There will be some bumps along the way. People and dogs will come and go. But with some tenacity you can get a club up and running! It may last well beyond your disc dogging days, providing a great place for future Disc Doggers to get hooked on the sport and connect with their dogs!
It may seem like there are a lot of things to do to start a club, but the real key is to just start small and build. It’s possible to make it happen! I remember the first meeting of the 5 of us who reorganized the KCDD. We sat down at a restaurant and wrote down some things we would love to eventually have happen for our club, which at the time seemed impossible.
We also wrote down and decided on the little things we needed to do right at that moment to get going. Now, years later, all the “impossible” things we wrote down have happened, and many, many more!
Walt Disney said, “The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.”
So with that in mind… Go start a Disc Dog Club!
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Educators and Contributors
Here at DDU we are thrilled to present the best instruction from the best Disc Doggers in the world. This article was put together by Jeff Scheetz, the President of the Kansas City Disc Dogs.
