Recruitment and retention resources

1.1. What do you want to achieve?

What you do and how you do it will depend on the long term aspirations, commitment and skills set of you and your band. Any significant mismatch between your recruits and existing ringers can lead to the band becoming disillusioned, your new recruits drifting away or ringing leaders/teachers suffering from burn-out.

So, begin by deciding what you want to achieve, rather than what you are going to do. When you are clear about this it will be a lot easier to decide who to target, how to get them into your tower, and keep them there.

How many new recruits do you want?

A low-level steady flow of new recruits

Your band is doing well and you want a slow, steady stream of new recruits to keep the band young and fresh. Aim to increase general awareness of local bell ringing and bell ringers using a wide range of different media and networks. If potential ringers can find you and make the decision to learn to ring by their own self-interest and motivation, they are more likely to commit long-term. This isn’t about a big event, its about a steady drip-feed of news with a clear and welcoming “call to action”.

An injection of new recruits or to build a band from scratch

For recruitment on this scale you need to be thinking of events and mass communication. It is quite possible to recruit a band in one go even in relatively small communities. Make sure you plan an engaging event AND for what comes afterwards. This is a long term project so make sure you are building on strong foundations of local leadership and committed support.

A large scale recruitment project

Big recruitment events do work. They tend to be longer in the planning and require quite a lot of people to work together over a longer period of time. It is a great opportunity to bring together people who don’t often ring together and make great use of people’s non-ringing skills. Make sure you have a good plan to hand-over from a central organisation to local towers. This is a great way of breaking down boundaries and facilitating group teaching and learning.

What are the aspirations and values of your band?

• Are you interested mainly in keeping the bells ringing on a Sunday?
• Are you looking for ringers who can extend your method ringing repertoire?
• Will the band welcome the new ringers or resent the time they take to train up?

Do you have the skills and people to transform new recruits into fully developed ringers?

• Organise some teacher training?
• Ask for help from surround towers?