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Dive
Clubs play a major role for many scuba divers around the world.
Clubs are as important as they are fun. They give you an opportunity
to meet divers in your area, find dive buddies, and even establish
lifelong friendships. But clubs are also important in giving
you an opportunity to stay active in diving, and increase your
knowledge and training.
Clubs range from a handful of friends to large and organized
clubs with hundreds of members. Some are privately run by elected
officers, some organized by local dive centers, still others
organized on university campuses and military bases with limited
memberships. But all have a common goal, to bring divers together
for the enjoyment of the sport they share a love for.
Clubs organize local dives and trips throughout the year. They
commonly have instructors within the membership that can help
you continue your diving education, or just to be there to help
you feel more comfortable if you are fairly new to diving. Clubs
are important locally for forming clean-ups or lending a hand
in other community environmental events. Clubs meet regularly
where members can share experiences (fish stories), hear guest
speakers, and plan future events for the club.
Scuba Yellow Pages continually receives requests for information
on clubs, and many ask how to start a local club. We have an
extensive dive club listing
and suggest that you first find out if there is another club
in your area. Joining an established club is always preferred.
They have the organization and experience, and by joining you
will add your experiences as well. Establishing a new club can
be a lot of fun, but there will be loads of work involved and
you will need determination to see it through.
The Underwater Society of America has a manual on 'How to Form
a Dive Club.'
Table of contents includes:
guidelines
sample bylaws
sample membership form
sample club newsletters
sample waiver of liability
etc
It is in 3 ring binder form. It sells for $20 including postage.
If you are interested contact:
Carol Rose
President USOA
CROSEUSOA@aol.com
We have asked some dive clubs for their direction in starting
a new club and have included their reponses below. We hope this
will point you in the right direction. If your have been
involved in starting a club, we would like to have your comments
as well.
Dolphin Dive Club of Sacramento
My name is Jack Millard and I belong to the Dolphin Dive Club
of Sacramento. We formed in 1980 as a nonprofit incorporated
organization, since then the cost to incorporate has skyrocketed.
We have about 100 members of which about 20 are very active
and the rest vary in their participation, I think you will find
this to be typical. We meet one night every month at a local
pizza parlor with a large meeting area and a big screen TV and
screen to present videos and slides. At our meeting last night
we had about 50 members and guests. The best way to recruit
new members and to keep those you have is to stage many activities
the group enjoys. I will attach a copy of the introduction page
we give out to explain our group. We try and maintain a good
relationship with all of the area dive shops and encourage them
to support us by referring new divers to us and by contributing
to our various events. We also invite them to make presentations
at our meeting about their trips and equipment without making
a direct sales pitch which would turn off our members.
We charge dues for different classes of membership. An individual
membership costs $30.00 per year, a family membership costs
$35.00 and a student membership is only $15.00. We try to keep
the kids active by organizing fun things for them to do while
the parents are diving. Our major fund raiser every year is
a charter to dive on a liveaboard in southern California which
typically makes us about $3,000.00 per year. We use this money
to subsidize other events so a member actually receives about
$50.00 in benefits for the $30.00 dues if they participate in
all of our activities. I hope this helps. Let me know if you
would like to see a copy of our membership application an/or
club bylaws. We hired an attorney to write our application to
try and insulate us from liability. We have a web page at http://www.DolphinDivers.org
Jack Millard
HammerHeads Dive Club
I would like to first of all suggest that people look into starting
a local chapter of the HammerHeads. As DEMA helps to sponsor
it, the H-Heads are a good organization. However, if that doesn't
appeal to some folks, then they might well benefit from a few
other ideas. We, as divers, should feel privileged to be able
to experience the underwater world. Scuba diving grows in popularity
each year, yet we still belong to a somewhat elite group. There
are things we can do to help maintain our own interest and to
get other divers interested and excited. Do you have a local
dive club? If so, get involved with it. New members are always
welcomed and appreciated. However, if there is no club in your
area, why not get with some of your dive buddies and start one?
Dive clubs can be lots of fun and provide an avenue for divers
to stay involved year round. Regular club meetings can provide
a social activity, through dinner and a meeting, and new learning
experiences through interaction with divers of various experience
levels, guest speakers, and slide shows. Clubs can schedule
monthly dives (or more often) to the local water hole, and schedule
periodic trips to farther destinations. Clubs can get involved
with the community with activities such as clean-ups in or around
dive sites. The whole idea of a club is to bring divers together
and provide a forum to pursue common interests.
If you think you would be interested in getting a club started
in your area, you must be willing to invest the time and effort
to make it work. Find others divers that share your excitement
about diving and the prospect of a club. Plan out the details
carefully, and divide the work among your initial core group.
And even though it will be a lot of work in the beginning, the
rewards of a club will be great.
A dive club should be a useful resource to its members, providing
them with social interaction, a source of continued education
and dive buddies. Clubs provide a common focus for members who
have common interests such as spearfishing, wreck diving, trips
to tropical islands, or other such specialized interests. Clubs
should pass along safety and environmental information and provide
incentive for active participation in diving activities.
Unlimited Sunshine & Blue Waters,
Dennis Vines
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