Business of Curling Regional Symposiums Spring To all Canadian Curling Centres!

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1 Business of Curling Regional Symposiums Spring 2015 To all Canadian Curling Centres! We are looking forward to meeting each of you at the Business of Curling Symposium to share with you the best practices curling facilities from across Canada are using to make their businesses vibrant and successful. We have organized a new series of topics; some traditional and other new presentations of trends affecting our businesses. Please join us in experiencing new information and ideas as well as sharing ideas with fellow board members, or club managers from your area. This networking opportunity is invaluable and we guarantee you will go back to the rink with at least one great idea!! Finally, we would like to ask you for a favour. We know that each of you has a personal success story from your club that could be shared with the big group and shared with us as presenters to add to our 'portfolio of great stories'. Therefore, we would ask that each club prepare a short outline of something they're doing very well that contributes to the success of their business. Examples of ideas are: volunteer recognition, fun bonspiel formats, food & beverage, great ads, fundraising, etc. If you can, bring digital pictures and anything else you could share with everyone Saturday afternoon. Thank you in advance and thank you for what you do to help grow the sport of curling in your community! Good Curling! Danny Lamoureux Canadian Curling Association Director, Curling Club Development & Championship Services 1

2 The Fascinating World of Social Media Using Social Media to build awareness of the sport in your community and among your customers is a great way to build your business & brand. However, wading into the fast-moving flow of social media can be daunting to a curling club with very little time on its hands. This session will help you embrace this modern media, in particular Facebook & YouTube, to help you stay in step with customers living in this contemporary world. Learn how to populate your Facebook page with topical & relevant information. Find out how YouTube videos can enhance your club s popularity. Learn how to leverage Google to stay top of mind. Social Media has benefits you cannot ignore!! Volunteers Volunteers impact virtually every aspect of our curling operations, including our board of directors, property management, bonspiels, kitchen work, bar work, junior or youth curling, and on and on how do recruit them and keep them! This workshop session will explore strategies that will result in increased participation of volunteers. We will work together to develop a generic action plan for the recruitment of volunteers and most importantly the retention/recognition of volunteers. Pebbling, Scraping & Stones Every single day, our curling rinks must provide as close to championship ice as possible for the benefit of its customers. Little curl or wonky or slow ice leads to a lousy experience. Our national ice technicians are masters of their trade and they will help you understand what it takes to produce world-class conditions every single day. Our customers deserve it! This session will focus solely on pebbling patterns and water, scraping patterns and your most important asset, your curling stones! 2

3 Learn-To-Curl Extended Learn-To-Curl sessions are now the rage in many parts of the country with impressive numbers of new curlers learning and staying!! This session will show you ways to enhance the overall curling experience among beginners and novices to ensure we retain them as active, interested, involved, and competent curlers. It is proven the more we can make their experience positive from the first contact onwards, the better the chances are that they continue to curl and they will want to be more than just a once-a-week member. We will walk through the steps to set up this program that is changing the world of curling. The steps include costing, training & recruiting of instructors, marketing to fill the league, the curriculum, special events, special classes (strategy etc.). It s an exciting program that is working in many jurisdictions with great success. Why not yours?? Superior Customer Service: Keeping what we worked so hard to get! We often hear we don t need customer service; we re not a business, we are a curling club. Nothing can be farther from the truth! We all work hard at recruiting new people to the club. But once they re in, we seem forget about them and then wonder out loud where did they go?. We will look a number of ways to deliver superior good customer service in a curling rink and a lot of the little things you can do to put the golden handcuffs on newer players and making them members for life. 3

4 Building Capacity: Membership Recruitment & The Demographic Shift: what it means to curling. We all want more membership and more business but how do we do that. This session will be part presentation of many current best practices, and part group workshop to develop strategies we can each put in place to do just that. Did you know simple ideas like lawn signs are inexpensive and they work! Or you can spend small amounts of money on Facebook directed ads to your own markets and get results? And many curling operations are paying special attention to one time only rentals and they love it so much, they re back year after year! The Canadian landscape is evolving from coast to coast to coast. For our business to remain successful and relevant in our communities, we need to understand this changing landscape. This workshop will present trends affecting these communities and sport participation. As a group, we will focus on creating opportunities to take advantage of these trends and we will create plans you can take home to build your own business Board Governance By using a series of short workshops, we will explore the keys to being a successful board member. What do Boards do? What kind of Board is yours? Strategic planning and why it s important. How to avoid long Board meetings. Recruiting new Board members and why it can be easier than you thought. Spreading the workload by removing the tool belt around your waist! Bonspiels, bringing them back to life! It is not unusual to speak to curling clubs who are fearful of the existence of their bonspiels. Entries are down they cry! Sponsors are harder to find! Volunteers are even harder to find! Are there solutions? Absolutely! This session is about sharing what is happening with successful events not only in Canada but around the world! Let s stop doing the same things we have been doing for years waiting for things to change! Grant Writing Our curling facilities are mainly volunteer-operated and those volunteers work hard each and every day to ensure the business of curling survives. However, this leaves little time to spend on sourcing new revenues from various governments, foundations or corporations. These revenues are important for capital renovations or even new programming for our customers. This session will show you how to write simple but effective grant requests focusing on understanding your organization, planning the project, sourcing the funding and then writing the proposal!! 4

5 Risk Management We often pine for the old days when the words liability, governance or duty of care were rarely used if ever. But today s business of curling must understand and deal with these words on a day-to-day basis. Our presenter will walk us through all the things we need to do to protect the business and the customers who enter our doors. We will also discuss the helmet issue and the struggle club administrators face in dealing with this, not only with their young curlers, but their senior-aged players as well. Energy Conservation The engine that drives every curling rink in our country uses electricity to operate. With prices skyrocketing in many regions, the financial health of many clubs has become tenuous because of this largest, monthly expense on their books. It is unlikely costs will drop, therefore, we need to understand the tools and efficiencies available to reduce consumption and the hit to the bottom line. Our expert from the refrigeration equipment sector will present things we can do to stay ahead. 5