Dear members,

At Windrush it’s important for us to be as inclusive and as accessible as possible whilst remaining sustainable. In the past few months the committee has taken a close look at how we operate whilst listening to your feedback. As a result we’re making some important changes to our session costs, withdrawal period and token transactions, so please read the below carefully...

Sustainability (the word we use because no-one likes to talk about money)

With the introduction of online payments and MyClubhouse we have been able to fully understand how our core sessions work. It may surprise some members but the cost of our training sessions has remained the same since the club started - a very reasonable £5 - whereas unfortunately the cost of hiring venues has risen. We’ve looked at the figures and even with all our sessions fully booked, the club is set to run at a loss of more than £2,000 per year. In the past, this loss was covered by membership fees or surplus grants. To make sure we are sustainable and give us the flexibility to start new initiatives to meet the club’s promise without having to rely on external funds we have taken the difficult decision to increase the cost of all swim sessions to six tokens from the current five. This increase to the swim sessions will be effective from the summer timetable which starts on 6 May.

Credit/Debit card transaction fees

One of the drivers for moving away from the previous cash-based training model was to enable card transactions as it was widely requested by club members. Implementing MyClubhouse enabled us to take card payments, but one downside is that every transaction comes at a cost. The Committee took the decision to absorb the associated fees for a limited time. This was to make sure members were comfortable using the new system and while keeping training costs the same as before. In line with our sustainability review and what was originally agreed when implementing card payments it is now the right time to include the transaction charge for those purchasing tokens.

Tokens will still be sold in the same size bundles but the price of each bundle will slightly go up to cover the card fee. The new token prices will be as follows: five tokens = £5.27, 10 tokens = £10.34, 20 tokens £20.48, 50 tokens = £50.90.

These changes will take place when we introduce the summer timetable on 6 May.

Oversubscribed sessions

The introduction of MyClubhouse in February 2018 has been positive to both the training sessions and the ease of payment. However there has been difficulty for some members being able to join the more popular sessions. The main frustration is that sessions are fully booked when first released but there seem to be a lot of drop-outs on the day. The committee has considered many remedies for this and will be putting into place the following:

Waiting list trial: We will be trialling the waiting list function on MyClubhouse for our Cycling with Spin Bikes session on a Wednesday. The waiting list trial works on a one out/one in system so when the event is full, a queue will form. When someone drops out, the first person on the waiting list is offered the spot by email. They then need to accept or decline the spot. If they accept, tokens are debited from their wallet and they are confirmed on the session. If they decline, the spot moves to the next person on the list. If they do not respond to the email within 24 hours, the place is offered to the next person on the list. The key to making this work is responding to the email as soon as you can so that spaces don’t go to waste. The first session this will take effect on is the 8 May.

Withdrawal period: the automatic refund of tokens will be changed to 9pm the day before for all sessions. Morning sessions are already set up like this, so it is only evening sessions which change. We hope this encourages those who have a place to be prepared to release it earlier and enable your club mates a chance to sign up before they make plans for the next day. We understand that emergencies do occasionally happen so would encourage good sportspersonlike behaviour to still release that space even after the withdrawal deadline so others get the chance to join that session. The first session this will take effect is our Velodrome session on the 7 May. This will not only help members get a place in sessions but also will enable us to keep costs down by running the sessions at maximum capacity.

Thanks for taking the time to read this through, it’s taken us some time to get to this point but we feel the right balance has been reached and hopefully you do too.

We appreciate your ongoing support.

The Committee

#windrushfamily

 

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If you have any questions, concerns or comments please direct them to us at info@windrushtri.co.uk

or reach out to any committee member at training or the pub.

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