UK edition. This guide is written for volunteer-run clubs in the UK. Where rules differ — grants, tax, incorporation, safeguarding — follow the UK-specific pointers below or check with your national body.
A lawn bowls club is built around a rectangle of grass that demands more care than almost any playing surface in sport. Keep the greens true and everything else — interclub competition, club championships, social bowls, barefoot bowls on a Friday night — has a stage. Let them go, and no amount of committee energy brings the members back.
But greens are only half the story. Bowls clubs sit on valuable community land, usually with a clubhouse and a bar, and the clubs thriving today are the ones running two operations at once: a competitive bowls program for members, and a hospitality-and-events business — barefoot bowls, functions, community hire — that pays the greenkeeping bills and feeds new members in the front gate. This guide covers both.
Getting set up and affiliated
Established clubs affiliate with the national governing body for bowls, usually through a regional or district association; affiliation is what gets your members into interclub competition, representative events and coaching/umpiring accreditation, and it usually anchors your insurance arrangements.
In Britain, clubs affiliate through county associations under the national bowls bodies, and most run as unincorporated associations or registered Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs), which unlocks Gift Aid on donations via HMRC. If you're reviving or restructuring a club, our guide on how to start a sports club in the UK covers the basics.
Most bowls clubs lease their land from the local council or municipality. Understand exactly what the lease obliges you to maintain, what rent relief or community-use conditions apply, and when it expires — clubs with shrinking memberships on large land parcels are under real pressure, and a committee that can show strong community use (barefoot bowls numbers, school visits, hire income) is in a far better position at renewal time.
Greens and rinks: the product
Whether you run grass or synthetic, the greens set the ceiling on everything:
- Grass greens need a greenkeeper — paid, contracted or a skilled volunteer — running a proper program: mowing to a tight height, rolling for pace, renovations between seasons, and disease/moisture management. A green's speed and trueness is the first thing visiting sides talk about.
- Synthetic greens trade the greenkeeper's craft for capital cost: much lower weekly maintenance and all-weather play, but a big replacement bill on a known cycle. Many clubs run one of each. If you're weighing the switch, cost it over the surface's full life, not one budget year.
- Rinks are your unit of capacity. A green divides into numbered rinks, and how you allocate them — competition, practice, social, barefoot bowls — is effectively the club's timetable. Publish the rink allocation weekly so members aren't guessing, and rest rinks in rotation so wear spreads evenly.
Direct sun, shade lines, and dew all change how a green plays across the day; a good greens director keeps a simple log so the club can schedule big events on the club's best-playing rinks.
Committee and volunteers
Alongside president, secretary and treasurer, bowls clubs traditionally run:
- Greens director — owns the maintenance program and rink allocation.
- Match/games committee — runs club championships, social bowls formats and event days.
- Selectors — pick the interclub sides each week. Selection is the most politically sensitive job in bowls; a published selection policy (criteria, how form and availability are weighed, how grievances are raised) saves enormous grief. See team selection policy template.
- Bar and catering coordinators — because the bar is usually the margin.
The volunteer reality in bowls is an experienced but ageing core doing too much. The fixes are the same as any club — small, named jobs; rosters; asking directly — but bowls has one advantage: barefoot bowls brings hundreds of younger locals through the gate every summer. Capture them (a friendly MC, a "want to learn properly?" card, free coaching offer) and your volunteer pipeline problem eases with your membership one. More in how to recruit club volunteers.
Membership and getting new bowlers in
Typical membership categories: full playing (competition-eligible), social bowls only, social/non-playing (clubhouse rights — often the biggest category and the bar's best friend), and junior/student rates. Many clubs add a first-year introductory rate with free coaching and loan bowls, which is the single best conversion tool for barefoot bowlers ready to take the next step.
Make joining possible online. The person who loved Friday night barefoot bowls will not post a paper form; they will click a join link on their phone in the Uber home, or never. Online registration with card payment and automatic renewal reminders keeps the membership secretary's job humane — and the renewals season (the classic bowls-club cash-flow moment) far less painful.
Interclub competition, championships and social bowls
Interclub competition is the spine of the bowls season: sides entered by grade into the association's weekend and midweek competitions, playing home-and-away over the season. The weekly rhythm — availability in by mid-week, selection posted, teams of rinks (fours: lead, second, third, skip) confirmed, results submitted — runs best when it's published somewhere everyone can see, not read out at the club on Thursday night. ClubHelix competition and fixture tools put fixtures, selections and ladders on your club website, and results entry updates them once.
In Britain, the equivalents are county and district leagues, a heavy calendar of club friendlies, and national competitions entered through your county association — the weekly selection rhythm is identical.
Club championships — singles, pairs, triples and fours, plus handicapped and novice events — fill the calendar between competition rounds and feed the honour board. Publish the draw with round deadlines and enforce them kindly; every bowls club has a championship that once drifted months past its final date.
Social bowls is the everyday product: scroungers, jackpot pairs, mixed triples on a weekday afternoon. Keep formats short, cheap, and open to any standard, with names in by a set time and teams drawn on the day. It's also your bridge product — invite the new barefoot-bowls convert to social bowls first, competition later.
Barefoot bowls and the money side
Barefoot bowls deserves its own section because for many clubs it's now the difference between viable and not. Casual groups — work crews, birthday parties, students — book a rink for an evening, bowl in bare feet with loan sets, and spend at the bar. Run well, it's high-margin income on green space that would otherwise sit empty, and the best recruitment funnel the sport has ever had.
If the phrase is new to your club, it's the model that matters, not the name: casual groups booking a rink for a relaxed social session, no dress code, loan bowls provided. Sell it locally as social bowls hire, corporate bowls nights or party bookings — the economics work the same on any green.
Run it professionally: set session times that protect competition play and greens maintenance, price per rink or per head with bar packages, take bookings and payment online rather than by phone message, and roster a host who sets up mats and jacks, gives the two-minute how-to, and keeps the vibe friendly. ClubHelix lets groups book and pay on your website — publish sessions through events with ticketing or rink slots via facility booking — so the booking sheet fills itself.
Beyond barefoot bowls, the classic bowls income mix is membership fees, bar and catering, clubhouse hire, sponsorship (rink-side signage plus sponsored event days carrying a local business's name), raffles and gala days — more in club fundraising ideas. On the cost side, greens care, utilities, insurance and affiliation dominate; budget annually and keep a reserve for the synthetic-surface or irrigation bill you know is coming.
A weekly club draw or "100 club" remains unbeatable per hour of effort — check the small-society lottery rules on gov.uk before you start, and register with the local licensing authority where required.
Your bowls club website and communications
Members skew older, so bowls clubs sometimes assume the website doesn't matter. It's the wrong lesson. The members may ring the club; the barefoot bowls group, the function enquiry and the newly retired couple who just moved to the area all search online first — exactly the people the club needs. A good lawn bowls club website shows: what's on (competition fixtures, social bowls times, coaching), how to book barefoot bowls, how to join, function hire, and results/news for members.
Communication inside the club works best layered: the noticeboard and printed selection sheet stay (meet members where they are), mirrored by the website and a short weekly email; urgent changes — greens closed after rain, competition venue switches — go by SMS, which every member can receive regardless of smartphone habits. ClubHelix bundles the website, email and SMS together; see the lawn bowls solutions page for how clubs set it up.
If your committee is juggling a paper booking diary, a selection noticeboard and a website nobody can update, ClubHelix replaces the lot: a professional bowls club website with online membership, barefoot bowls bookings, competition fixtures and results, email and SMS — free tier available, see pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How do bowls clubs make money?
Membership fees, the bar, barefoot bowls and rink hire, clubhouse function hire, sponsorship and raffles. For many clubs barefoot bowls is now the largest growth income — casual groups paying to bowl socially, spending at the bar, and becoming tomorrow's members.
What is pennant in lawn bowls?
Pennant is the name used in parts of the bowls world for graded interclub competition: clubs enter sides that play home-and-away matches through the season, typically in fours (lead, second, third, skip) across several rinks, with results deciding promotion between grades. Elsewhere the same structure simply runs as district or county league bowls.
How do you attract new members to a bowls club?
Convert the people already visiting: barefoot bowlers and function guests. Offer a cheap first-year membership with free coaching and loan bowls, invite converts to short social-bowls formats first, and make joining possible online the moment enthusiasm strikes.
Grass or synthetic greens — which should a club run?
Grass plays beautifully but needs skilled, constant greenkeeping; synthetic costs more up front, far less each week, and handles weather and heavy barefoot-bowls traffic better. Many clubs run one of each — cost the decision over the surface's whole life, not a single season.
