Building a Gym Membership Base by Participating in the Community
Low attendance is a major issue in any gym business, and one flaw that is obvious here is that some gym owners fail to show that they’re worth joining by sponsoring, participating or initiating community activities. But while it is important to build a sense of community in your gym through fundraising for example, it can also be a challenge, as it is hard to get everyone from diverse backgrounds and with different personalities to train under one roof. If you’re serious about bringing them feeling a sense of community and loyalty for your gym, and eventually developing their sense of community and camaraderie with each other, it may be high time to do fundraising events to get everyone around excited of going to your gym to train!
And speaking of a fundraiser that can be used to get more members in your center, this event can also hold the key to donate to charities, which by doing so will help you gain exposure and do promotion. So it will be hitting two birds with one stone! You are raising public awareness of your gym and its benefits as well as you are giving back to the community that supports your business by giving to a local charity, one which benefits the people living in the community where your training facility is.
Now before any planning for this fundraising activity to get people in your gym, you should know who must and should be joining in order to make your effort worthwhile. So if you’re going to involve your staff, check into their schedule and see any conflicts as well as if you’re involving members. Who are willing to help? And once you have commitment from people to join, you can plan your fundraiser (and make it as big as possible). But by saying that does not mean you exceed beyond what you can do, including cost of supporting the fundraiser and capacity levels of your gym.
Building Community Awareness with Just for Fun (and Fitness) Activities and Events
There are several ways of fundraising for your chosen charity and exposing your business to a greater number of people in the community. We’ve listed some of the best and unique ways of promoting and improving your health club’s visibility in your community. Choose depending on your capacity.
- Host an awareness event for a local charity: You can have a charitable focus in your marketing and a way to do that is to develop and host a charity event inside your health club. You can consider contacting police or local fire departments that may be interested in competing with each other—for fun, or even local businesses that would enjoy the rivalry. By opting for this option, start advertising to customers who may also be interested in joining and supporting this charity event.
- Organize fun runs or sports events: Get recognition for your health club by organizing a fun event that is sure to get people interested and one thing to break-in marketing. You can set a minimal amount for registration and make sure to donate these proceeds to your selected community charity. And for the giveaway to participants, you can give them a souvenir reminding them of your health club, such as a t-shirt. When organizing, make sure you are categorizing fitness abilities and levels and giving away a prize for winners in every category. Win the hearts of community residents who might sign up for a gym membership by holding a fun fitness event!
- Organize a ‘dollar per mile’ activity: Gym members, residents and personal trainers can join this fundraising event, wherein you’re using your pool, spinning bikes and treadmills and participants are paying a fee (which will be enough to cover the fees so that you don’t spend your gym’s business budget). Then each participant is finding a sponsor for donating an amount for every mile he completes. So if he gets a sponsor to donate $5 per mile, then this sponsor will pay $20 if he completes four miles.
- Launch fitness and/or nutrition challenges: Speaking of a dollar-per-mile, you can also launch fitness challenges where your members can join by encouraging them, especially those that never really cross paths in one place. Apart from encouraging them to push harder accepting competitions and challenges, you are meeting your goal of building their sense of camaraderie with each other.
- Organize out of the gym events: You and your members have a life outside the gym and by saying that you can do fundraisers through social events. You can leverage this event in finding the commonalities your members have that they might want to share with each other. Believe it, this is one of the ways to building your gym’s community.
- Fundraise with apparel and t-shirts! Everyone loves nice-looking, greatly designed t-shirts and perhaps this technique to fundraising is one of the best ways of getting your name out there, eventually making your health club recognized in the community. You can sell these t-shirts and give the proceeds to your chosen charity. You can give it either in full or in portion upon deducting the expenses that you have spent for these products, all depending on your budget.
There you have some of the most innovative ideas on how to raise funds and build a gym community at the same time. Although this list is not comprehensive, it will help you get started to promoting your fitness center in your community and eventually growing your client base. Not only that these techniques aim to that, but also these are great ways of giving back to your community by donating to the charity of your choice. Check out and study your options well in choosing the technique that may work for you. Now if you have questions, you can call up our team and let us know how we can help in your effort. Finally, feel free sharing this guide to other gym owners and friends who might also benefit from these techniques.
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