I live in a small city (~60,000),without any other sizeable community less than an hour's drive away. In effort to expand my dance opportunities, I've decided to try and launch a USABDA (U.S. Amatuer Ballroom Dancers Assoc.) Chapter. Does anybody have any related words of wisdom, experiences (good or bad), or thoughts to share? The local dance community is definitely "small," so I don't know what the chances for success are.

R

one thought - good luck.

I live in the SWestern Connecticut area. There is a chapter that surropunds my county - it covers all of my state except for my area - the most densely populated and affluent.

Does USABDA make it easy? No. Apparently the 'elders' at USABDA liken their organization to a 'club' that is run by a senior citizens society. New ideas, new folks, are an anathema. There have been numerous attempts to set up chapters in this area for years, and virtually no help is given by the parent organization.

Additionally, they seem to think that social seniors and kids are much more important than any other segment... and if you're not one of them, you're expected to support these 2 groups unilaterally (for example, everyone pays more than the youth do to enter events, etc).

I saw the 'new chapter kit" - it was quite humorous. It basically apes your 1950's 'start a club' brocuhure ("ask your family and friends to the church basement and offer prizes for funniest hat' types of ideas for fundraising, for instance) and fails address internet interaction as a primary way of finding chapter members, for example. Quite funny.

I am in the Hartford area and the USABDA chapter has nothing up here. It seems to be a very small social club in the SE corner and that is all.

Hi Ralph,

I have to ask: is it really clear to you and your Board what the focus and goals of your new chapter will be? I think knowing why you exist, what you want to do, and how best to serve your members is vitally important. It's very important that the Board members keep these things in mind, and not let egos or personal agendas get in the way of doing whatever it is you all plan to do to serve your dance community.

I am very fortunate in that I belong to a successful chapter that has been in existence for 20 years now. We've got about 450 members, 80% of whom are competitors. Because we are mostly competitors, we've made our focus be providing low-cost low-key competitions for new competitors. We run four "club-level" competitions per year. Tickets to the ballroom are $15 for adults and $5 for under-18, and we don't charge extra to enter the competitive events. We get adults from the local studios who are just getting into competitions, kids from the various kid programs in the area, and college students from the local universities.

We used to try to run social dance parties but our area is so well served by other bars, clubs, and studios that the social dancers just don't need us. Frankly, I can't see why a social dancer in our area would even want to join USABDA...but that's just our area.

So, my big advice to you is:
be very clear as to the purpose of your chapter
set achievable goals
be frugal
don't let egos get in the way
set up a chapter web site
if you're in an area with an existing chapter, make it clear to propective members as to what makes you all different

Hope this helps. I'm more than happy to talk to you more about this.

By the way, I want to thank you for taking the initiative to try to start a chapter. Good luck!!!

Thanks to all for the input so far; I hope more continues to come....Laura, thanks for your offer to talk further. To give anyone interested some more background: no, there is no other chapter in our area, and only two others in the entire state (which is quite a lot of ground; I'm in one of the geographically-larger states). USABDA has targeted my city as a place they want to get a chapter started (I have no idea of how they decide to "target" a community though). I became involved in this because the only local non-bar place I had to dance "went away" when the university's student ballroom club fell apart. When school was in session, they would hold one dance a week, open to the community at no cost. My motivation at this point is simple: primarily a place to continue dancing, but also meeting "dance" people more in my age bracket (30's-40's) than the college students. If we have a ballroom community in the area, it is definitely an "underground" one. There are few dance studios in the area, and they seem to focus on ballet – only one has a ‘yellowpage' ad that even mentions ballroom. I'm a social dancer, though I've done one competition, and I teach a series of Continuing Education ballroom courses at the University. The number one complaint I hear from students is the lack of non-bar places to dance – they don't like the smoke or ambiance of the bars. As a ‘club,' we can approach places with suitable space about using it for dances at low or no cost.

Trying to start some sort of local, community-based club seemed to a logical solution, and that's why I contacted USABDA to see what was involved in creating a chapter. They sent a pinkish-colored handbook on how to start things; if we actually get of the ground, they will send their "bluebook," with which some of you may be familiar. The bluebook tells how to actually run a club. From what's been said above, it sounds like I might have to use a little creativity in that department.

I've already been having to do that with the "pinkbook," as I'll call it. Basically, this is a guide on how to get an "organizational meeting" held, with some discussion of what happens afterwards – if the organizational meeting is a success, I understand that's when they'll send me the "bluebook." The pinkbook is full of sample flyers, press releases, etc. However, all of these samples lack any directions/means of localizing them. They focus primarily on what USABDA is and does, on the national level; and only mention the local organizational meeting in an almost by-the-way manner. They're distinctly ill-suited for a local newspaper, so I'm writing my own, as well as getting some flyers printed up.

This is a long-winded way of saying that at the moment, there is *no* board. The organizational meeting is suppose to have the formation of a steering committee as one of its outcomes, and that committee serves as board until you get enough members (25) to form a chapter. That's when you have elections to form a board. In other words, I'm doing everything so far by myself, and at my own expense. I've talked with several acquaintances who dance, as well as some students, and they've all expressed interest in attending the meeting – but no one's volunteered to help get things started, and I don't know them well enough to do some friendly arm-twisting. I'm hoping when a bunch of people gets together, the need will become obvious, and several someones will step forward. If they don't, things will go nowhere, because quite literally I can't do it all, nor should I have to....

So that's where I am, with the organizational meeting scheduled for the first week of June. I'm going on the assumption that I'll get an active steering committee going (an assumption I have to make!). I'm trying to look ahead and see what comes next – or perhaps what should NOT come next. "Funniest hat" fund raisers don't quite sound like the direction to go. But what is?

Laura, if you'd prefer discussing things off of this list, please let me know and I'll give you my e-mail address.

R

I'm curious why exactly you want to be a USABDA chapter at this stage - as you've already seen & heard from others, the national organization is not wonderfully helpfull. Rather, almost all of the success or failure rests on local efforts.

It would seem to me that in an area with as little ballroom establishment as yours, perhaps the best thing to do is to keep formal organization to minimum, and just promote dancing.
See if you can get a hall on a weekly or at least frequent basis to hold a dance. Charge something like $10 for admission, and include an hour of free lesson beforehand. Try to promote it in the community as an interesting and accessable thing.

You mentioned a defunct collegiate program - it can be very hard to keep student organizations going - and seem to have a personal interest in focusing on an older crowd. But I wonder if there is a way that you can get your new informal organization to welcome both students & adults. If things are kept in balance between age groups, it's my experience that they actually do mix pretty well for purposes where greater overall number are an asset. And if you do eventually want to become a USABDA chapter, the student can be a help there too - the NY chapter for example has a very good mix of student and adult involvement, with some college kids on the chapter board.

Hello Smoothie,

My motivation is quite simple – without some kind of structured group, I'll have no place to dance except when I teach (which is usually people who have never done ballroom before) – which means I'll lack opportunities to learn new things, or push myself, and will actually degrade in skill (something I've already caught happening). Does it have to be USABDA? No, but at least they offer SOME kind of guidance, and their organization is a "hook to hang my hat on," in terms of publicizing things locally. In fact, whatever type of group, if any, that I manage to get together, *can't* become a USABDA chapter until we have 25 members. I believe they give us a year to get the 25, though I'm not sure why there's such a time limit. So if I only get 20 people, we'll in theory *have* to become something else. And in the meantime – well, I've never tried to get a club going before, and I'm sure the information I'll get from USABDA in the Bluebook will help me avoid at least a few mistakes.

So far as college kids go – having them participate in whatever gets going has been in my game plan all along. If I gave the impression of "focusing" on the "30's-40's" group, I erred. By saying I wanted to meet people in my own age bracket who were into dancing, I didn't mean I was excluding other groups! Someone in one of the other posts had referred to seniors and college students predominating – that's also been my experience, and I'm hoping a community will attract some of my peers, while also avoiding some of the instability you mentioned as inherent in college student groups.

So far as just renting a space and holding a dance – well, first I'd want to the size of the possible participant pool.

R