Help With Setting Up A Club

[AngelMell]

I'm thinking about starting a "knit and natter" type group in my village. Rather than use peoples' homes we'd like to use our village hall, which obviously needs to be paid for. We were thinking about making a small attendance charge, to cover the cost and also to help provide refreshments.

Can anyone point me in the direction of finding the relevant guidelines for setting up a club, where money is involved?

Thanks

[boxtops]

It depends if you want to set yourselves up as a formal club with memberships and a committee, and so on. If it's just informal, with no membership fees other than a "donation" to cover the cost of the hall and the teas and coffees, I don't think you need to do anything. You might want to consider public liability insurance (in case a knitting fight starts up)! - but otherwise, I'd ask the people who run your village hall, what other groups are there, so you could ask them how they set up. Open a building society account so you can put the money in there, and pay the hall when they request it.

[AngelMell]

Thanks for the info.

[naomi24]

Don’t make it hard work for yourself. You don’t need to do anything formal. Just work out how much each participant needs to contribute to cover the cost of hiring the hall, and buying the tea and biscuits. The hall will be covered by public liability insurance – and no need for bank accounts – the money you collect won’t warrant it. Just keep a note of payments and keep any excess money in a box to either be shared out at sometime – or as a group in my village does – pay for a Christmas meal or drink for everyone - depending on how much is in the kitty. Good luck.

[lightbulb247]

local council? ask members of the community who wants to join, see if they are willing to help?

[naomi24]

ps. I do a lot of organising for my village, and what I've advised you to do is perfectly legal. No problem at all. Keep it simple. :o)

[AngelMell]

Thanks for the further info. I'm hoping to get a decent turn-out to make it worthwhile

[ferlew]

Our local library offer free use of their premises for a local knit n natter group.
The downside is, as it's held only whilst kids are at school, we have to sit on tiny kiddy chairs in their section so as not to interfere with the smooth running of the adult section.
We take turns to buy tea/coffee/sugar, and the librarians brew up for us.

[Maydup]

I agree that you should keep it simple. Collect the money in a tin and pay for the hall from it. If you have a good response all well and good, but if there are not enough of you to maintain the hall, you have lost nothing and can move to one of your living rooms with no great effort.

If you're serious and get a good response, look for other clubs to affiliate with. You might be able to attract some community funding to support the rent. Our county has a well established knitting circle and you might like to look at their website for some inspiration. If nothing else they have some good patterns on here which are free! Good luck.

http://www.norfolkknitters.org.uk/home.html?name=Home&mparent=HOME

[boxtops]

There was something in our local health journal about how good Knit and Natter groups are, for getting people out of their home, helping with pain relief (knitting takes your mind off other problems). Good luck with it.

[Eve]

What a great idea. Maybe you could try and barter for the use of some space if you get involved in helping a charity like knitting for the local premature baby unit. I knit for my local one when my hands aren't too bad.

Could encourage others to come along to learn to knit/crochet for charity too and maybe get wool or funds for wool donated.

Maybe even something like a local hospice. I learnt to crochet (although lost the knack now!) when I used to volunteer at a hospice as some of the ladies there used to and taught me (I used to help a lot with creative diversional therapy), and some of what they made was sold for the hospice charity.