We will have 10,000 Members by 2015

by Mark Banicevich, IV dan
Auckland North Regional Director

That’s it. That’s our target. Subject to feedback from our instructors and members.

“We will have 10,000 members by 2015.”

We have around 2,000 members now. It’s quite a target. Five times our current membership. We currently have about 75 clubs with an average of a little over 25 members per club. 10,000 members could be 250 clubs with an average of 40 members, or 200 clubs averaging 50 members, or some other combination. That’s detail we haven’t determined yet.

Wouldn’t that be awesome! More events, bigger tournaments and camps, Taekwon-Do on television, more clubs to visit...

Can we do it? We think we can. How can we do it?

That’s where our strategy comes in to play. Before we get to that, however, how did we decide on the target?

On 19 June, nine people from around the country congregated in a conference room near the Auckland Domestic Airport. Participants were senior members of ITFNZ, members of the Executive Committee, and members of other ITFNZ committees.

We started with our vision (see the sidebar right). Recall from our strategic framework (Figure 1) that our vision determines our strategy, using the foundation of our mission statement and values. The key question we had to answer: what major target can we set, to enable us to achieve our vision?

That’s when we came up with, “we will have 10,000 members by 2015.” Through various strategic thinking exercises, it became clear to us that growth is the key to becoming “among the most popular arts and sports in every town in New Zealand.” Of course, this growth is tempered by our values – we will not sacrifice the quality of our Art to increase membership. We have to find other ways.

Once we had our target, we had to decide how we can achieve it. We examined the needs of our members and our instructors, we thumped around various ideas, and we agreed on a small number of goals, together with a timeline to achieve them (Figure 2).

We have three short term goals. These are things we want to have underway in the next year.

• Develop our instructors

• Retain our students

• Restructure ITFNZ Develop our instructors.

Develop our instructors. We need to develop our current and future instructors. Developing current instructors will enable us to increase the membership in current clubs, and developing future instructors enables us to open more clubs. This means developing their Taekwon-Do, and also their other skills, such as instructing, and club administration (making it easy to open and run a club). This could include ideas like mentoring, and other systems for instructors to support each other.

Retain our students. Like many activities – particularly martial arts – we have a very high student turnover. We lose about 40% of our members every year! We want more of our students to want to stay. Developing our instructors will help, but there is more we can do. Ideas may include specialised courses for particular student subgroups, developing social networks, and collecting and using information from students who stop training.

Restructure ITFNZ. Our current structure has managed well until now. However, it will not cope with 10,000 members. We need to examine our administrative efficiency, and develop a structure that will effectively support our growth – our target and future size.

We have five medium term goals. As we achieve our short term goals, our focus will change to new goals, as illustrated in our timeline (Figure 2).

• Develop key relationships

• Open national and regional headquarters

• Develop a school programme

• Open more clubs

• Host a World Championships

We have some ideas for each of these goals, as well, but there is a lot to be done.

If there is one thing we will need to achieve these goals, it is help. Your help, if you are interested. Don’t think, “I won’t be able to do anything.” You can. The only thing you need to help us, is to want to help. We will take it from there – work with you to find something that suits your skills, and your schedule. If you would like to be involved, please email me: mbanicevich@itfnz.org.nz.