How to find new MD's?

[Sandbagger123]

Our group has been doing the monthly matches for our  club for 7 years. We are all on the verge of burnout.  a couple of folk  of the group has stated they are out after this season.   We have been trying to figure out whom to approach to see if they would be interested in taking over the program.    So far casual discussion with them has resulted in no takers. 

 

i know we are not the first in this situation.   So how does one find someone to take over a club?  We usually close for the winter months and if none is found before next spring then it might just die. 

[EEH]

First I’m 2 1/2 hours away from this club, I shoot there almost every month. Club has been there for at least 20 years and a few years ago the MD, tried the same thing. No one was interested so one faithful Saturday he proclaimed this is my last match. I hope some one takes over thank everyone who has helped me in the past.

still shooting there. The next match there were 4 new people setting up and doing a good job. Something people just have to be motivated.

[motosapiens]

instead of having one person take over, have several people take over, so duties can rotate, and you only MD every 3rd or 4th match.

 

reduce the duties of the MD by having someone to help with stats and getting people to help set up stages.

 

if one person does everything, then of course they'll burn out. 

 

[Maximis228]

I ran our my local club for 4 years and recently stepped down. I had 2 others with me on the eboard but I did 90% of the work. These other 2 on the Eboard with me stepped down as well.

 

The only way I was able to drum up interest was to say the club will cease to exist if we dont fill the empty roles. The threat of losing the club was enough to get some people to step up.

[MikeBurgess]

what I have seen is it takes just stepping down to get someone to step up, most seem to find it easier to not volunteer if they still get a match to shoot but when the match may not happen people that didn't want to end up stepping up. 

 

That said matches take a team of people to run, the more people you can have helping the better. We have about a half dozen people that help setup the day before the match, we post the stages on google drive and everyone comes and does what they can when they can.

[ATLDave]

It's best if the next round of "likely suspects" can get pulled up into running the club/MD'ing gradually.  If you've got a group of people running the club, rather than having them all leave at once and trying to find replacements across the board (or a new guy who's going to take sole primary responsibility), it's better to stagger the departures.  

 

When the existing club leadership is in good shape, that's the time to start incorporating other folks.  Ask shooters who are local and have high overall enthusiasm levels for the sport to come up with a stage design for a match.  Help them troubleshoot it.  Then do it again next match or the one after that.  After they've learned some of the stage design lessons, ask them to guest MD a match. 

 

Part of running a club isn't just putting on the next match... it's succession planning.  You have to help create the next generation of MD's while you're in charge.  If you wait until you're burned out, then asking people to go from 0-60 is a big ask.  And will generally require the "club's gonna end unless one of you f***ers steps up" threat.  Sometimes that's inevitable, but if it really comes to that, it's usually a sign people in charge haven't been thinking long term.

 

Edited August 29, 2019 by ATLDave

[Overscore]

Move the matches to Saturday if it's currently on a Sunday.  You need someone with a servant's heart, but you'll find more of them if your match doesn't conflict with church.  

 

At my club, a friend and I run the matches, and in some ways we're the perfect people for it,  in that neither of us really cares about the competitive side of shooting, and we more enjoy just facilitating things for others, and then getting some shooting in for ourselves.  But, what makes us not so great is that by not having that hyper competitive component to our personalities, we sometimes don't give the competitive people the correct responses they'd expect when something goes wrong at the match, just brushing it off with a, "Eh, who cares, it's just a fun match" type of attitude.  We're trying to correct that.

 

We have a few guys who design and set up stages every month, and they'd be great at taking over MD duties, but they're very competitive, and I'd never ask them to take it over.  They would quickly learn (if they don't already just intuitively know it) that it's impossible to be mentally in the game as a competitor while playing double duty as a MD.  So, you have to find someone who enjoys other people's success and enjoyment and doesn't really care too much about his own results.

[MemphisMechanic]

Leave. They’ll find someone to replace you. 

 

Then return and enjoy shooting the match.

[motosapiens]

2 hours ago, Overscore said:

 

We have a few guys who design and set up stages every month, and they'd be great at taking over MD duties, but they're very competitive, and I'd never ask them to take it over.  They would quickly learn (if they don't already just intuitively know it) that it's impossible to be mentally in the game as a competitor while playing double duty as a MD.  So, you have to find someone who enjoys other people's success and enjoyment and doesn't really care too much about his own results.

 

At our club, some of our best competitors (including some major match winners) are involved as MD's and stage designers. It is still a bit of a distraction to run a local match, but the more people you have involved, the less of a distraction it is. All of us shoot at other clubs and shoot major matches as well, so being slightly distracted once a month at our local match is not really a big deal. I kinda think it's good practice.

[sc68cal]

On 8/29/2019 at 10:45 AM, ATLDave said:

When the existing club leadership is in good shape, that's the time to start incorporating other folks.  Ask shooters who are local and have high overall enthusiasm levels for the sport to come up with a stage design for a match.  Help them troubleshoot it.  Then do it again next match or the one after that.  After they've learned some of the stage design lessons, ask them to guest MD a match. 

 

+1 to this. It's better to build and groom additional people to help the match that could step in later, instead of a mad scramble after someone burns out and just walks away.