Building a College Team

[DanceMentor]

So I am friends with a new president with lots of energy that wants to build of a college team at a major university. They have great facilities and a large student body with many students who have a budget for dancing. In recent years the team has been small and not very organized. However in previous years they hosted a competition and had a much larger team. What advice would you give him to increase both the size and organization level of the team?

 

[TAK]

First, I would want to know why the team has been small and unorganized. Do they have team officers (maybe flaky ones), or no officers yet? Have they tried publicizing (but are e.g. losing students to other dance groups), or not so much? Are they failing to attract team members or failing to retain them, or both?

Here are some general suggestions:

1) It's important to elect or appoint team officers. There are a lot of different jobs to do on a ballroom team, and assigning one person to each related cluster of jobs will allow much more innovation and refinement than asking the new president to do all of them himself. Officers on my team include a financial officer, an officer in charge of publicity, one who plans social events, one who coordinates with pros to teach classes, one who oversees the team-run competition, one in charge of helping out new people/beginners, one in charge of reserving space on campus, and a webmaster -- among others. These are just some ideas so that this guy can choose what is important based on his team's needs.

2) This may be obvious, but collecting a small amount in team dues will help the team provide much better quality instruction, which will help with retention, and if the amount is reasonable it probably won't reduce demand by very much.

3) The first two things will help with both organization of the team and retention of new members (#2 assuming the money is used well). If attracting new members is a problem, then improve publicity -- have a website and a mailing list, attend student activity fairs, perform at student arts showcases, post an ad on Facebook, ask team members to promote team events on Facebook, etc. I think there has been a previous thread with ideas for publicizing and marketing a collegiate dance team.

 

[tunape]

know their customers, segmentation, and 4 P's (product, price, promotion, placement)

there's also a circulated blue book by the former USABDA's Youth College Network (YCN) which has a collection of guidelines and wisdom. I have a paper copy, I should digitize at some point.

 

[bia]

For retention: be ready to go with a consistent schedule from the beginning of the semester. I have known some university clubs who take a long time to get going (the officers don't start thinking about it until they get to campus) and who have a lot of cancellations or changes. Yes, there will be some weeks where attendance is lower because it's a busy academic time or everyone's watching the Super Bowl or whatever, but it's better to do everything you can to get people into the habit of coming, and that means as few breaks in the schedule as possible.

I'd encourage them to get the team competing as quickly as possible -- immediately increases motivation -- but not to try to host their own competition again until the team is big and thriving. Comps need a big labor force.

 

[mindputtee]

I've been one of the two team captains at University of Maryland for the last year and am going to be for the coming year as well.

An organized officers board is crucial to running our team. Our officers board is comprised of:
president
vice president of special events- plans workshops, social dances, formals, competitions etc
vice president of daily events- manages daily things like waivers, practice spaces, class schedules
treasurer- deals with all the money
team captains (2 because we have so many people and an intensely bureaucratic campus recreation services)- plans and organizes competition team, travel arrangements etc.

We also have auxiliary officer positions that are more flexible and depend more on what we need each specific year like a procurement officer who deals with orders like practice wear, shoes, technique books, team jackets etc.

One of the most important things we've found is getting newcomers in the door. We do that using free beginner classes taught by upper level dancers with a lot of personality ;-) . Social events like social dances and team dinners help get them more integrated into the social aspect and make them more likely to stay. We also do bigs and littles where new members get paired up with an older member who will helps them with their dancing etc. and helps the get to know the other club members better.

 

[madmaximus]

I've found that running such a team is not far removed from running a business. Here's some requirements:

• Succession planning: critical because of the short leadership time-span
• Long-term strategy for growth--define the goals for growth, and expect it to be achieved
• Branding the team so there's cachet to being a part of it (eg: becoming a strong team)
• Profitability (you can do more if you have the funds...)
• High-level Technical Expertise: Lineup great instructors--preferably "name" brands--, and how you will retain them (you'll have to spend a little for that one).
• Tactical: Advertising--use all possible advertising channels to get the message out. Promote the team, membership, and dances heavily.
• Strategic: Heavy Marketing (create a web presence with an active community, appealing to the appropriate demographic like selecting "younger dances and music")
• Sales: CONSISTENT AND CONSTANT Active recruiting for members

and most important: choose leaders that ARE CAPABLE of doing the job--don't choose leaders because they expressed interest. Founding leaders are the most critical in the organization's life.





m

 

[llamasarefuzzy]

I've been on the exec board for our collegiate team for 3 years now.

A couple of things we found out the hard way

1) Its really important to host a big kickoff event at the beginning of the term. Have a 30 min lesson- we usually do 15 min waltz and 15 min american rhumba because they are the same. We then have open social dancing with team members on hand to dance with newbies and make them feel welcome. Advertising is typically a really big deal for this event. We also usually have food

2)We usually have 3 levels of classes. A sampler class is taught by experienced (silver+ ) team members. We spend about 2 weeks/per dance and just try to get as many basic steps as possible in a term for people who just want to dance socially. The next level up is the Newcomer class. We usually have our assistant coach teach this class. It teaches the newcomer steps with a little more emphasis on technique for our newcomers who want to compete. Finally, we have our bronze-silver class, which is by audition only.
We would love to have more levels, but we are a smallish team that is relatively new and we don't have any gold+ dancers.

We have also found it to be very important to create a team atmosphere. We usually do movie nights or grab a team dinner from time to time.

Be sure to emphasize that there are newcomer levels of competition. So many people are intimidated by what they see on DWTS.

Good luck!!!

 

[Lioness]

Bumping...most of the things in this thread I think we can manage when we start the team up next year...

The one thing I don't know how to go about is coaching. DP and I can get away with teaching newbies. We're good enough for that. But what about more advanced dancers? Would a fee of, say, $5 a student/class (maybe 10-20 students initially) be enough to cover a coach? How would you go about finding such a coach?

 

[bia]

I can't really speak to coach-finding or price, but the teams I'm familiar with do a semester membership fee rather than per-class payment. Less complicated day to day, plus it encourages regular attendance. First week free to try it out, then pay for the rest of the term.

 

[Janson]

I suppose the way you look at it is $5*(20 students) = $100. Is that enough for a Pro to come in for, and how long? An hour, half and a half, 2? If you can find someone who is actually interested in the team and gets involved then you have a huge asset. Getting enough quality tuition for everyone for a reasonable price is hard though, especially with all the varying levels of skill and commitment.

 

[Lioness]

I can't really speak to coach-finding or price, but the teams I'm familiar with do a semester membership fee rather than per-class payment. Less complicated day to day, plus it encourages regular attendance. First week free to try it out, then pay for the rest of the term.

That's a good idea...I just know that as a uni student, I find it easier to come up with $5 a week than $60 in one go. Maybe a slightly higher price per week, and a discounted semester block?

 

[Leon Theou]

It might be a good idea to give people the opportunity to try the club out for free for one or two lessons that you and/or your partner teach (you don't have to sell the experienced dancers, so these free lessons are targeting newbies) before committing to bringing a coach, because if nobody's coming, then why bother.