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Hi all,
I thought I'd share the method we have used in Calgary to get so many girls out trying footy over the 2007 summer. We have really tapped into the networking potential of Facebook.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Facebook is a social networking website. Members post information about their lives, and can choose to make that information public or keep it private.
When starting the club in Calgary, I searched the public profiles of women who had been on exchange to Australia, had lived there when growing up, and also found Australian women living in Calgary. I figured some of those girls might be interested in playing footy because of their connection to Australia. I started a group page for the Kookaburras with information on training times, and sent out a brief message to all girls with a connection to Australia pointing them in the direction of the group.
The results were surprising. A few Canadian girls were very keen to try the sport they had watched when on exchange, and a lot of Aussie girls were surprised to hear that there were men's footy teams in Calgary, let alone a women's team. Approximately half of our current squad was recruited directly (and effortlessly) through using Facebook. About half of the girls I approached via Facebook came out to try footy during the season.
Another bonus of using Facebook for recruiting is that it allows us to recruit girls from outside the social circles of our current members. This means that often we will pick up additional girls through contacting one person, and at the very least we bring the club's existence to the attention of a greater number of Calgarians.
If you haven't already done so, I would suggest creating a women's club-specific Facebook group, and start searching for girls with an Aussie connection in your local area.