How big is the average UK caving club?

[BCA Membership]

So far in 2024 140 member clubs have renewed their membership of BCA.

Answers below - How many members do you think the average UK caving club has?
(Include all members, caving, non-caving, and those club members who get their BCA membership as an individual or via another club)

No prize for the closest - just bragging rights ;-)

Where do you think your caving clubs fits in? Bigger or smaller than the average?

 

[Dave Tyson]

So far in 2024 140 member clubs have renewed their membership of BCA.

Answers below - How many members do you think the average UK caving club has?
(Include all members, caving, non-caving, and those club members who get their BCA membership as an individual or via another club)

No prize for the closest - just bragging rights ;-)

Where do you think your caving clubs fits in? Bigger or smaller than the average?


View attachment 18813

I would guess the average is around 40 per club. UCET with ~100 members is bigger than average

Dave

 

[Babyhagrid]

I reckon about 50 as the majority of clubs are quite small, with the larger hut owning clubs bringing the average up.

 

[Cavematt]

It depends on how you are calculating your average.

But assuming you are doing it by the mean (i.e. the sum of all the club membership numbers divided by the number of clubs in that dataset) then I'd guess at around 35 members on average.

However if you are calculating by median, which avoids bias incurred by what I suspect are a small number of unusually large outlier clubs, my guess would be lower (perhaps 25 members).

My club (York Caving Club) has 31 members, so I'm taking a punt that we are very average

 

[Pegasus]

I was (pleasantly) surprised to read there are 140+ member clubs 🙂

 

[BCA Membership]

Ops, meant to qualify average and forgot!
I was thinking mean but I will post the mean and median answers tomorrow

 

[BCA Membership]

Yup - 140 member clubs plus 7 access controlling bodies and 10 associate clubs.
Also another 10 member clubs who were 2023 members and will hopefully renew soon.

 

[andrewmcleod]

Don't forget when calculating your average that some people are in more than one club

 

[caving_fox]

Don't forget when calculating your average that some people are in more than one club

I think these wouldn't appear in BCA stats because they register in which club you're paying your fees. Unless you are paying the BCA twice for insurance.

 

[cavingbiker]

I think these wouldn't appear in BCA stats because they register in which club you're paying your fees. Unless you are paying the BCA twice for insurance.

Would DIMs affect the figures? Do they specify which club(s) they belong to?

 

[Babyhagrid]

I think these wouldn't appear in BCA stats because they register in which club you're paying your fees. Unless you are paying the BCA twice for insurance.

All members of a club should be on the CIM document that gets sent to the BCA regardless of where they pay their fees via.

 

[PeteHall]

All members of a club should be on the CIM document that gets sent to the BCA regardless of where they pay their fees via.

Correct. Are you another club secretary by any chance?

On average, I'd reckon somewhere in the region of 40, but since that's already been guessed, I'll go with 42.

I know of some extremely small clubs that no doubt balance things out a bit compared to the bigger ones, but now I'm wondering if the bigger clubs will be dragging up the average more...

As far as my clubs go, a bit of a mix, I reckon.

The Cheddar is a pretty small club, can't remember how many members, but below average size.

The Wessex is one of the largest, as far as I'm aware.

Welsh Section of CDG has 39 members, so pretty average by my reckoning, but I think of it as a pretty small club.

No idea about Gloucester, but I'd speculate on the larger side of average.

 

[Babyhagrid]

Correct. Are you another club secretary by any chance?

I am indeed
Although our safety and training officer (my girlfriend) did the spreadsheet this year

 

[BenGreen]

Based on an arbitrary estimate of 4000 active cavers, and 150 clubs (assuming all renew), that would give us 26.6 members per club.

Given that some members are in multiple clubs, and some cavers are not in any club, I'm going to assume they cancel each other out.

So I'm going to guess 27.

 

[Badlad]

My guess, based on some guesses, guesses that there are about 6000 BCA members. Perhaps a few more 6300. Say 700 of those are DIMs and a couple of hundred CIMs haven't renewed yet. So 5400 divided by 140 equals 38.5714285714

 

[Speleofish]

Perhaps a little too accurate. Unless you're trying to fit down Strans Gill (insert improbably narrow cave of choice) when being .57142 etc might be an advantage.
By that token I probably represent 1.2 or, if our formidable and unbribeable practice nurse is involved, 1.6. OK, 2.

 

[cavemanmike]

I’ll guess 37

 

[DuncJ]

I'll have a dabble at 33.5 and three-quarters.

 

[kay]

31. I'll decide later whether that's a mean or a median.

 

[Stones]

My Guess is 38