BOF Annual Awards 2024: Club of the Year – Airienteers

The Club of the Year Award has been designed to recognise Clubs that:

• Provide opportunities for everyone to experience high-quality activities at all levels.
• Demonstrate a commitment to the development of participants, coaches, and volunteers.
• Take an innovative approach to the promotion of orienteering activity throughout the wider community.

Airienteers prides itself on providing a range of activities for its members, which encourages their progression and development as orienteers.

From the Wednesday night series (now every fortnight throughout the year), it's Saturday
Introductory Series (targeted at welcoming newcomers to orienteering), to several other
local and regional events (including night events). In addition, they host occasional extras such as indoor sprint events and Blue Plaque events.

There are also training sessions available to Juniors & Seniors, string courses, and the Club
Leagues (including Night, Spring, Summer, and Annual). Activities have ranged from the really informal street mass start events to significant competitions. By JK 2025, they will have run every major event in the UK calendar at least once over the previous decade.

Recruiting, retaining, and rewarding volunteers

The club rotates its helper groups, giving them vouchers, and they have a dedicated Volunteer
Coordinator. 

Using their Club Development Officer and Junior Development Officer, they find that this relieves the strain on volunteers. Perhaps more crucially, they feed their committee members with pizza at Committee Meetings!

Building relationships with local and regional partners

Thanks to their Junior Development Officer, Simon Martland, Airienteers have great relationships with local schools, particularly Bradford Grammar School. They have also developed strong links with Councils, the Civic Society, Friends of Parks (for POCs), and so on.

Inclusion

Airienteers has diversity and inclusion at the heart of its strategic plan (which was started by
ex-Chair, Liz Carter). 

They have been running informal events in areas that have disadvantaged communities and have found these to be a success by using various communications channels to pre-publicize them, as well as placing adverts in visible areas locally. 

This has worked especially well for the Saturday afternoon series. Simon Martland (Junior Development Officer)works in local schools at least one day a week and runs a school competition.

Looking ahead to the future

The club has a thriving younger junior cohort, assisted by junior and mixed-age training events, who are moving through the ranks and providing increasing numbers of members of the YHOA junior squad.

They have developed links with schools, and their Club Development Officer (Lois Parker) has recruitment and retention as one of their key tasks.

Their financial position is comfortable enough for them to subsidize adult members at inter-club competitions and fully subsidize all juniors at regional and national competitions and relays. In addition, white and yellow competitors at most events are free or very low cost.

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Congratulations to Airienteers on winning their award.

Next up, we will be sharing details of our University Club of the Year Award Winner 2024! Check our website or social media daily for the latest updates.