I spoke with David recently and here is his story as he told it to
me.....

I first became involved in my daughters swimming club in Western
Sydney when my daughter was 8 years old. Swimming was an easy choice,
as we were always swimming weekends at home in the pool, on holidays
at the beach and weekly swimming lessons. I always thought swimming
was a great sport and was good exercise for the kids as well. What I
did not know at the time, was my daughter was turning out to be a
natural swimmer and proving to be a very competitive one, but that is
another story for another day.

As my daughter started winning race after race surprising her mum and
dad week after week, it was inevitable that I was to become more
involved with the swimming club. I got involved firstly with
training, I took my daughter to training a couple of times per week
sharing the load with my wife, I started to assist the coaches &
trainers get equipment out for the kids, then moved onto race days,
helping with the organisation of the races and general help needed
within the club on race days.

Eventually I took on one of the top jobs in the swimming club -
unpaid of course, these are jobs of love, my daughter was winning
major carnivals now across the state, and I took on the role of Vice
President of the swimming club. I felt with so much involvement I
could add value to the swimming club and the kids. After watching my
daughter over the past couple of years grow into a competitive
swimmer I knew that I could help other kids do the same.

As the Vice President of the swimming club I had many hats to wear to
look after all my duties, communication, reporting to the board, as
well as thinking about membership, marketing and sales, events and
swim teams. One of the first major issues that occurred after I
became Vice President was one of the kids did not have the funds
required to attend one of the upcoming meets.

I knew I could impact this, and set about thinking of ways we could
raise funds for our swimming club. We had done sausage sizzles to
raise funds, we had ticket sales with prizes to the winners. Fund
raising for our swimming club was always talked about, and to me
appeared to be one of the biggest challenges we had, as funds raised
helped the kids. If we raised less funds from fund raising this only
ever impacted the kids, equipment for the kids etc. I remember
thinking about fund raising, membership, kids equipment and then I
got an idea!

I grabbed a piece of paper while sitting down in the stands watching
my daughter train, I remember the day it was one of those middle of
winter days when the outside temperature had dropped to around 5
degrees. I started writing bullet point ideas and thoughts.....then
out came an idea....what if we had a membership card that all members
could buy for 10 dollars, I could go to local companies and ask them
to advertise on the back of the card for an amount of money and offer
members a discount at the stores that advertise on the back of the
card.

Great idea I thought, took it to the committee and as they do, came
to a decision "Unless we can fund it ....it will never happen"

The Outcome was awesome,

    * we raised 10 dollars for every membership card sold
    * 6 local businesses were proud to be supporting the local
       swimming club with discounts for members
    * The money raised paid for the Magicard ID Card Printer
    * Every card after this cost us 70 cents and we sold for 10
       dollars
    * We made the card an annual card