Building a club that doesn't depend on a handful of people

Bicester & District Gymnastics Club has plenty of demand. The challenge has been making sure the club behind the gymnastics can keep up.

Improve my club

When a gymnastics club outgrows itself

Around 150 gymnasts currently train with Bicester & District Gymnastics Club at Bicester Leisure Centre, with more than 300 children on its waiting list.

It's a busy club, run by volunteers alongside jobs, families and everything else that comes with everyday life.

Paul Knight first got involved to rebuild the club's website. At the beginning of 2025, he became Chair, taking on the role alongside his full-time job and young family.

By then, the club itself was changing too. It had become a Community Interest Company and, as it grew, the committee knew the way things worked behind the scenes needed to catch up.

Bookings, payments, registers and communications were being managed in different ways. And a lot of the knowledge needed to keep everything moving sat with Paul, the club secretary and the head coach.

For a volunteer-run club, that wasn't a particularly comfortable position to be in.

When something comes up, we look it up rather than ask around. For a volunteer committee that matters more than the hours saved.

Making the club easier for everyone to run

Bringing the club onto Thrive4Gymnastics gave the team one place to manage more of the day-to-day running of Bicester & District.

Gymnasts could be allocated to the right classes, coaches had up-to-date registers, payments could be collected automatically and communications managed centrally.

But for Paul, having the information somewhere other people could find it has mattered just as much as saving time.

"When something comes up, we look it up rather than ask around. For a volunteer committee that matters more than the hours saved."

It means fewer things rely on somebody remembering what happened last time, knowing where something is kept or being available to answer a question.

And when the people running the club are fitting that work around the rest of their lives, that makes a difference.

No more Sunday-night payment chasing

One job Paul is particularly happy to see the back of is chasing payments.

"The chasing has largely gone. Nobody is sitting down on a Sunday night working out who has and has not paid."

Payments are now collected automatically each month, with the committee able to see what's coming in and pick up arrears earlier.

That gives the treasurer a clearer picture of where the club stands financially, but it also helps when the committee has decisions to make.

If they're looking at coaching hours, considering new equipment or planning what the club can afford to do next, they're working from actual numbers rather than trying to piece the picture together.

The chasing has largely gone. Nobody is sitting down on a Sunday night working out who has and has not paid.

Managing a big change without creating a big admin job

Having a clearer view of classes has helped in other ways too.

The team can see where sessions are full, where spaces are available and where demand is building, which is particularly useful for a club with more than 300 children waiting for a place.

That was put to the test when Bicester & District restructured its recreational programme for September. The club created three pathway groups, which meant every gymnast needed to be moved into the appropriate group and every family needed to know where they were going.

It could easily have become a sizeable admin job. Instead, with class and gymnast information already organised in Thrive4Gymnastics, the team could manage the changes without creating another mountain of work for its volunteers.

Making sure the club can carry on without you

Perhaps the biggest change for Paul isn't one particular task that's disappeared. It's knowing that the club is less reliant on individual people.

Bicester & District now has its company structure and committee in place, alongside its policies and a central way of managing membership, money and communications.

The knowledge of how the club works is becoming something that can be shared rather than something held by a few people.

For a volunteer-run club, that's important as people change jobs or family commitments change. Committee members move on, and the club needs to be able to keep going when they do.

Bicester & District hasn't become less busy. There are still classes to run, payments to manage, families to communicate with and hundreds of children waiting for the chance to join. But keeping all of that moving no longer has to depend quite so heavily on the same handful of people.

As Paul puts it...