The homebrew club I belong to is looking to start collecting dues and make it a more educational and formal brew club. A few ideas that I have to utilize the dues are:
- Pay for brewery tours and potentially transportation
- Commercial beer tastings
- Reimburse members who get a BJCP certification
- Reimburse members competition entry fees
- Buy an oak barrel
- Brew a large beer to fill said barrel, paid for by the club, to be given to club members at an annual party
Does anyone else have any ideas? I'd love to hear what other clubs across the country are doing to makes dues a worthwhile thing for their members.
One of the most important things to do at this point is to draft up very basic bylaws that at minimum outline the mission of the club and the process for deciding how the money get's spent. A statement that the club is "non profit" is a good idea as well.
Make sure the president is given a certain level of discretion for incidental spending like tasting cups and other small amounts. $20-30 is a good amount and then after that, require it go to a club vote. It also depends on how big the club is.
If your goal is to grow the membership, spend some money on advertising via nice business cards, a formal website, etc.
One thing that is tricky is that big spends should always benefit the whole membership (or a realistic majority) and/or support the mission of the club. When an activity is exclusive at all, it should be either paid outright by the participants or only partially subsidized by the club. E.g. if you have 20 members but a barrel project only has room for 10 shares, it's not fair for the other 10 to effectively pay into it.
Ideas:
Commercial Calibration. Buy the BJCP top examples of a given category and taste them in order while reading the guidelines. Do one style per meeting.
Name that style game. Buy the listed commercial example of 5 random subcategories and have the club taste each one without showing them the bottle (use pitchers or growlers). Have them name the category (1point), subcategory(1point) and brewery (1point). Most points wins something, a book, or reimbursement of the BJCP exam costs, A bottle of each of the beers...whatever.
Buy the off flavors dosing kits and do a few every month.
Pay the entry fee and shipping for the club's choice in the AHA club only competitions.
Buy equipment and books for the club "library".. Floor Corker, books, DVDs, etc.