Helping a swimming club create a more connected experience for families

For more than 45 years, Cleethorpes and District Swimming Club has supported swimmers across North East Lincolnshire, from children taking their first lessons through to athletes competing at national level.

Alongside its competitive squads, the club’s learn-to-swim programme, ‘Bubbles’, plays an important role in introducing hundreds of young swimmers to the water each year in an environment designed to feel supportive, encouraging and inclusive.

As both areas of the club continued to grow, maintaining that sense of connection across swimmers, families, coaches and volunteers became increasingly important.

The club wanted to create an experience that felt clearer, more joined up and easier to navigate for everyone involved, while also making sure volunteers and teaching staff had the support they needed behind the scenes.

Supporting families through periods of change

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the club began reviewing how it would safely reopen while adapting to changing guidance, restricted pool access and new Swim England requirements.

Like many organisations at the time, the challenge was not simply responding to short-term disruption. It was making sure the club could continue delivering a consistent experience for families and swimmers while operating in a much more complex environment.

At the same time, the committee recognised that many of the club’s existing ways of working had become increasingly difficult to sustain as the organisation expanded. Communication sat across multiple channels, information was harder to manage consistently, and volunteers were spending significant amounts of time trying to coordinate day-to-day responsibilities across the wider club.

The focus became creating a stronger structure that would support the club not just during periods of uncertainty, but long into the future as well.

Making communication feel clearer and more consistent

As the club strengthened how communication and information flowed across the organisation, the experience for families and volunteers became far more connected.

Parents could access clearer updates around lessons, squads and events, while coaches and teaching staff had greater visibility across the wider swimming programme. That consistency helped reduce confusion, improve confidence and create a smoother experience throughout the club community.

Importantly, it also reduced pressure on the volunteers and staff responsible for keeping everything moving day to day.

Rather than constantly reacting to disconnected processes or manually coordinating updates across different areas of the club, the team had more capacity to focus on supporting swimmers and building positive experiences for families.