One club, one clear view:
how Boroughmuir Blaze made growth easier to manage

Keeping up with a growing club

Boroughmuir Blaze has grown from around 100 members to more than 500. With Thrive4Grassroots bringing membership, payments, registers and enquiries together, the team now has a much clearer view of what’s happening across the club – and a smoother way to get people from first enquiries to fully signed-up members.

Based in Edinburgh, Boroughmuir Blaze has been around since 1961 and took over the running of the Crags Centre 14 years ago. Back then, the club had roughly 100 members. Today, that number sits at more than 500.

Eoghann heads up operations, helping with sign-up, timetabling and, as he puts it, “all the admin tasks that coaches don't want to do.”

As the club grew, so did the challenge of keeping track of everyone. What had worked for 100 members wasn't going to be quite so comfortable at 500.

One clearer picture of the whole club

Before Thrive4Grassroots, registers, membership details and returning members were managed across multiple spreadsheets. As the club grew – with people regularly joining, returning and leaving – keeping everything up to date and sharing information with coaches and staff became much harder.

Now, there’s one central place to work from. The team can keep track of membership, registers, enquiries and payments without jumping between files or spending time searching line by line through spreadsheets.

For Eoghann, that means being able to see something much more useful than a list of names.

“Now we've got it all in a central location so we can keep a track of the health of the whole club.”

Having that visibility has made it easier to share the workload too. Coaches and staff can work from the same information rather than relying on one person to find it or pass it on.

“We can share the responsibility of it now because it's all in one place.”

A smoother route from “I’m interested” to “I’m in”

Boroughmuir Blaze has several ways for people to get involved. There’s community basketball, where people can opt in and book classes, alongside membership-based basketball and the club’s different teams and squads.

Having one system that can support those different routes has made the journey from enquiry to trial to full membership much smoother. If someone comes along for a trial and wants to continue, the team can invite them straight into the right squad, without starting the process again somewhere else.

Communication fits into that journey too. The team can create club messages with images and links and invite people directly onto products or into squads, helping everything feel more joined up.

And Eoghann can see the difference it’s making: “It's helped us retain members and obtain new members a lot more quickly than previously.”

Payments and support are easier to keep on top of

For Boroughmuir Blaze, managing payments isn’t always as simple as paid or not paid. The club offers a lot of subsidies and scholarships, so the team also needs to keep track of applications, approvals and outstanding membership amounts.

Those applications now come into one place, where they can be reviewed and accepted. If someone has an outstanding amount, the team can see that too, giving them a clear starting point for any follow-up.

With Thrive4Grassroots linked to GoCardless, there’s also no need to manually check whether every payment has arrived. If one doesn’t come through, the team is notified and can follow up with the member directly.

There’s more flexibility for members too. For the new season, Eoghann has already noticed plenty of people choosing to pay for the whole year upfront:

“It looks like a lot of people are paying for the year up front as well, which just makes things so simple.”