Club Secretary Emma Moreton has been supporting the 62 members of Brown Clees YFC in Shropshire for the past two years and has grown in confidence in the role.
I’m in my second year of being secretary, and it sounds like a cliché, but I wanted to give back to my club. I like to encourage everyone to get involved in everything that YFC can offer – it brings so many opportunities, especially through the competitions.
I organise the club calendar, social media, memberships, competition entries, and generally act as a first point of contact for any questions.
It’s certainly a juggle, but keeping on top of things and actioning them straight away definitely helps. It means I don’t have to set hours aside to work through a long list, but can rather keep momentum and look towards planning the next event in plenty of time.
My leadership has grown exponentially. I am now really confident liaising with everyone, from the juniors and their parents to the wider community.
We have 62 members in total, and we don’t generally split our club - everyone can come to everything. I think it’s great we can all get along as one club.
We initially had a lot more juniors than seniors turning up on Monday evenings, so I had an idea to introduce ‘Over 18 Nights’ in the hope it would draw the older members back to coming regularly.
This has proved successful and we have enjoyed events such as watching an ice hockey match, having a go at pole dancing, and attending a Pickstocks tour. It is also a nice way to invite the over-18s from other clubs to come along and join us too.
It’s mostly by members bringing their friends along to see what YFC is all about. We have our New Members Evening in September too, which is a great way for local families to come and see what we’re all about and get involved.
We meet every Monday. I organise tours and socials and publish a calendar each month with our club and county events so everyone knows what’s going on in advance.
Members can suggest a tour or activity they’d like us to do and I’ll always try and fit it into the calendar where possible.
One of the best things I feel we’ve done this year is laser tag in a nearby woodland. It definitely brought out our competitive sides and it was an activity everyone got stuck in with.
Key information getting lost in communication... Let’s face it, sometimes messages don’t get passed on (especially from member to parent). By keeping the WhatsApp groups up to date, this enables me to let everyone know what we’ve got coming up in plenty of time. The parents' group chat is especially useful to round up consent forms for competitions.
Don’t take on too much, share the responsibility. Also, it’s never too early to start booking or planning your events - getting them in the diary straight away has really worked for me.
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