Advice on starting up an Astronomy club....

[Lunuar Mike]

I am in the process in seeing who might want to join up for a club. I posted my interest on Facebook as well as my personal page on Facebook and a group site I will give it a day or two and see who and how many would be interested. If there's an interest awesome if not I will keep my brilliant hobby to my self and some friends either way I will see who may or may not be interested . Clear skies , Michael 

[Dave]

13 minutes ago, Lunuar Mike said:

I am in the process in seeing who might want to join up for a club. I posted my interest on Facebook as well as my personal page on Facebook and a group site I will give it a day or two and see who and how many would be interested. If there's an interest awesome if not I will keep my brilliant hobby to my self and some friends either way I will see who may or may not be interested . Clear skies , Michael 

Happy to give any advice I can. Good luck with getting it all going. 

[gajjer]

I was involved with setting up a photographic club many years ago.  As someone said earlier, you will probably need to do everything yourself initially. Believe me, nobody wants to be the chairman or secretary - however, they do want to tell you how to do everything!

It's important to meet regularly on an easily identifiable day - eg first Monday of the month. You may need to remind people in advance so get phone numbers and ring them.

It is also important to have something planned to do at the meeting - you may have to be the speaker/lead every week until you get going. It could be that people just bring some of their kit and talk about it. Books ,images anything. Initially it will be too expensive to get speakers and often they are booked many months in advance. 

Arrange an informal meeting at a pub and get an idea of numbers.

Be prepared to be let down. People can be very unreliable. 

Stick at it.

Good luck

cheers

Gaj

[malc-c]

3 hours ago, Lunuar Mike said:

I am in the process in seeing who might want to join up for a club. I posted my interest on Facebook as well as my personal page on Facebook and a group site I will give it a day or two and see who and how many would be interested. If there's an interest awesome if not I will keep my brilliant hobby to my self and some friends either way I will see who may or may not be interested . Clear skies , Michael 

Things may be different in the US, so some of the advice may not be relevant.  Having  set up one society, and co-founded another it's not an easy task.  It's not so much the practical things like finding a hall to have meetings, or sourcing guest speakers, more so getting people to sit on the committee or volunteer to participate in activities such as manning a stand at local fetes and events.  You also need people you can trust, especially when it comes to the treasurer position as they could be handling lots of money when the society / club grows.

The strength of any society / club is its members, and without members the club / group / society will soon go under.  So they need to feel that they are getting value for money, and I mean that in the literal sense.  In order to hire halls, cover guest speakers, or newsletter production (some still like hard copies) you need to have a membership fee.  At the start it's very likely that you will be paying these things out of your own pocket until the membership grows and the costs are covered.

There is nothing to stop you getting together in a bar and talking astronomy with other like minded people over a beer or two, which is fine, and many a society started that way.  On the opposite end you could be entered into a contract hiring a hall on a monthly basis, with a prominent astro related guest speaker attending to talk to several hundred people.  But if you lean towards the latter then it has to be run almost like a business.  You'll need 3rd party public liability insurance just in case joe public suffers an injury or an accident happens when they are attending an event you've organised.   In the UK there is a federation of astronomical societies and any UK astronomical society  becoming affiliated  to them as a member can get cover through them at a reduce fee.