How and why we moved our club to Spond
By Jackie Ridley · 11 September 2026 · 7 minute read
When people hear that our club uses Spond, they sometimes assume we were an early-adopter sort of club, keen on technology and always looking for the next new thing.
The reality is much less exciting. We didn't change because we particularly liked technology. We changed because, as the club grew, the way we were doing things simply wasn't working very well anymore.
How it was
Four years ago, when I joined the club, this is roughly what communication looked like.
We had WhatsApp groups, but not everyone who needed to be was on them, and nobody was entirely sure who had been added and who hadn't. We also had a private Facebook group, with a slightly different and overlapping group of members. Some people were in both. Some were in neither.
If you wanted to send something important to the whole club, you couldn't really be certain that everyone would see it.
Our membership records were kept in a spreadsheet. Every new member meant someone manually typing details from a paper application form: name, address, phone number, emergency contact, membership category and so on. It was slow, it was easy to make a typing mistake, and it was possible to accidentally overwrite an entry, or even a whole row, without realising it until later.
And then there was email. Our system was very slow, and a limit on distribution list size meant we had to send each email in batches. We also had to update our email distribution lists every time someone new joined the club.
Why Spond?
We didn't carry out an exhaustive review of every club app available. A neighbouring club had already moved to Spond and recommended it to us. It was free to use unless you started taking payments through it, so it seemed worth trying rather than spending months comparing different systems that we hadn't actually seen in use.
A couple of us sat down and set it up. It was more straightforward than we expected, helped by the fact that there are plenty of guides and help articles available online. We weren't having to work everything out completely from scratch.
Initially, we were thinking about how Spond could help us manage our membership database in a more efficient way. We didn't really think too much about the impact it would have on our internal communications with members.
The decision that made the biggest difference: importing our membership database
One decision we made early on turned out to be particularly important. Rather than asking every member to sign themselves up from scratch, we imported our existing membership database into Spond ourselves.
Our club policy already covered the use of systems to hold membership data, so this wasn't really a data protection leap. It was more a practical decision about making the change easier for members. Members still had to create their own account if they wanted to use the app on their phone. But importantly, if they didn't, they weren't simply cut off.
Whenever messages were posted, Spond would email members who hadn't downloaded the app, so nobody was left out just because they hadn't signed up yet.
That was important to us. Joining the app was something people could do when they were ready. It wasn't a condition of being kept informed.
The first month, and the two years after
About 60% of our members downloaded the app within the first month or so. This wasn't particularly age-related. Some people are naturally more comfortable trying new technology than others, whatever their age, and that seemed to be much more significant than how young or old people were.
Over the following two years, the number continued to grow steadily, and now most of our members use it. I think there's probably a bit of a social element to that as well. If you're not on Spond, you become aware that you might be missing something that everyone else already knows about.
Where it sits now
Getting a Spond account is now simply part of joining the club, alongside completing the membership application. Members are added to the relevant groups when they join: all members, bowling members, women bowlers and so on. The right people get the right information without somebody having to remember to add them manually to another WhatsApp group or email distribution list.
It's a small thing, but it has made a difference to those first few weeks for a new member. You're new, you don't necessarily know who to ask, and it's quite easy to miss things. Now, most of that just happens automatically as part of joining.
A change you notice more in hindsight
If I'm honest, there wasn't a single turning point. There wasn't one dramatic moment when we suddenly thought, 'This has transformed the club.' It was much more gradual than that. What I did start noticing were comments from members about how much easier it was to know what was going on at the club. Nothing particularly profound, just the occasional 'It's good to know what's going on' or similar comment.
And then there were the reactions to posts. Someone would post about a team winning, or a good result at a county event, and the 'well done's and applause emojis would start appearing underneath. They were little reactions from people who, a couple of years earlier, might not have heard about the result until the next time they happened to be at the club.
I think what we ended up with was something that was even more important than our savings in admin time: a club that felt more connected. People knew what was going on, they could see what other parts of the club were doing, and they could join in with celebrating each other's successes.
If you're thinking about doing something similar
Looking back, there are a few things I'd pass on to another club.
You don't need to compare every option before you start.
A recommendation from another club was enough for us. It meant we could actually get started rather than spending months researching.
Import your existing data rather than asking everyone to start from scratch.
It removes a big barrier to getting going. Obviously, make sure your club's policies and data protection arrangements cover what you're doing before you import anything.
Make sure people who don't sign up can still receive important information.
Whatever system you choose, I think this is really important. Don't create a situation where members are effectively excluded because they haven't downloaded an app.
Don't assume reluctance is about age.
It wasn't for us. People vary enormously in how comfortable they are with technology, and that isn't necessarily related to their age.
Expect gradual uptake.
We had roughly 60% using it within the first month, and the number continued to grow. Don't judge the whole thing by what happens in the first few weeks.
Make it part of joining the club.
Once it's simply part of the membership process, rather than something you have to persuade people to do, it becomes much easier.
Use groups to target communication.
Not everybody needs every message. A good structure means people get the information that's relevant to them without being bombarded with everything else. Having said that, don't make groups too exclusive. Your social members may be just as interested in how teams are doing in the leagues as your bowling members. Apps such as Spond let users tailor their notifications, so they can switch these off if they want to.
Be patient with the change in culture.
It's unlikely to feel dramatic at the time. In our case, the difference showed itself in small things: more people commenting, more people knowing what was going on, and more members taking an interest in things happening elsewhere in the club.