British Fencing Launches Phase 2 of the Rewards Scheme to Measure and Support Growth

British Fencing has recently partnered with Lolly Rewards to rollout an app based system which allows BF to reward people when they participate in fencing. At the same time, fencers will be sharing information with their club, their Home Country Association and British Fencing about how often and where they are fencing, which is vital to growing the sport of fencing. It’s quick and it’s easy. 

This scheme will also allow us to reward the many volunteers without whom our sport would not be able to run.

Phase 1. of the project started in 2014 and saw the technology piloted across several clubs. We are now launching Phase 2. in which the technology is being made available for clubs to use across the UK. There will also be the opportunity for competition organisers to volunteer to pilot the rewards scheme at competitions.

Why are we running this scheme?

Many of you will know that for years we have been looking for a simple way of accurately measuring participation in fencing across our entire community, i.e. beginners, recreational and social participants as well as competitive fencers. Gaining a better understanding of participation in our sport is essential to secure both public and private sector funding and sponsorship. We all know that fencing is a vibrant sport, with a loyal, active, community and that it appeals to a wide range of people. But we need the data to support this in order to attract this funding to support the sport and develop our plans for the future.

We already know that many more people fence than are members of British Fencing. But how many more?

Even within our own membership, we need to know how often people fence, volunteer, compete and generally support our sport. Over the years, we have found simple systems, such as spreadsheets and registers, do not enable us to record this information efficiently and accurately, and clubs tell us that it can be tough to keep paper registers and spreadsheets up to date.

A chance meeting with a parent of a young fencer led us to a potential solution which already exists. This parent had recently launched a technology start-up called Lolly Rewards. Lolly Rewards is a simple to use but very flexible and robust online system designed to help retailers create and manage efficient loyalty points schemes. The technology is ready to use. It allows people to collect reward points through an app on their phones. Whilst the company is primarily aimed at the retail market, Lolly Rewards and their funders are keen to help us see whether their model can be adapted for use in fencing – thus helping us solve some of our participation recording challenges.

Briefly tell me how it works?

Irrespective of where you fence (club, school, community club), why you fence (competitively or for fun), or what level you fence at (beginner, competitive) if the organiser of the fencing activity is signed up to the scheme you will be given the opportunity to sign up online (if you haven’t already) and collect points for participating in that activity.

Points can be collected several ways, including clicking on a link within an email (generated through the Lolly Rewards system by the organiser) or by scanning in codes provided by organisers using an app on your phone.

Volunteers can collect points in exactly the same way.

I’m a fencer/volunteer, what’s in it for me?

BF will be working with Lolly Rewards and other companies to create exclusive offers for reward point holders. For example, BF expect to offer discounts on competition entries and training opportunities. Through the Lolly Rewards platform we are looking to bring you offers (eg vouchers, discounts) from other companies – and not just fencing specific suppliers.

You can download the Lolly Rewards British Fencing app http://www.lollyrewards.com/britishfencing which has been exclusively created for the British Fencing Rewards scheme.

I’m a club, what’s in it for me?

Clubs will have access to a customised system where they will be able to manage and access participation information for their club sessions. Clubs will also be able to earn and spend points (eg on reduced club membership fee, equipment discounts, grade packs etc). The system also provides a useful method of ‘reminding’ fencers that they were expected to turn up at club!

There is a simple help guide http://help.lollyrewards.com/ on how to set up and register for clubs who want to start issuing rewards points.

For those clubs that chose not to join in with the rewards scheme, we will be sending a weekly emails to each BF registered club asking how many people attended club that week. This data is vital to support access to funding – both public and private – which we need to help keep your membership fees low and the sport running.

I’m a competition organiser, what’s in it for me?

BF are currently piloting offering reward points to volunteers and fencers at competitions and looking at how the system might best support competition organisers in the future. If other competition organisers wish to be involved with the pilot phase of this please contact us on [email protected]

I’m the Region/Home Country, what’s in it for me?

We will be providing access to summary participation reports at regional and National (Home Country Level). More information will be provided directly through the Home Country Associations/

How is BF making money from this?

We aren’t. British Fencing really needs this participation data to better understand the sport and working in mutual partnership with Lolly Rewards we hope that we can collect this data in a way that benefits everybody. Longer term BF and the Home Countries Associations hope that this data will enable us to access more public and private funding to help grow the sport.

BF are not paying Lolly Rewards either – Lolly Rewards are keen to support our fencing community through this partnership and have made a long term commitment to our sport. Supporting our Olympic sport provides a great opportunity to showcase their technology to retailers. The longer term future value for Lolly Rewards lies predominantly in the retail market through the aggregation of reward point schemes and the points exchange that could be enabled. 

Personal Data

The scheme currently requires your name, email address and a password of your choice. You need an email address to confirm your login, a password (because the plan is for these reward points to actually be worth something). There are more details on creating accounts and security can be found at http://help.lollyrewards.com/accounts-login/.

Lolly Rewards will only use your name and email address to make sure your collectors account is securely accessed and communicate activity on your account such as points awarded or your point balances. 

British Fencing will only use your name and email address to contact you about the British Fencing Reward Points Scheme. This may include confirming your participation at an event/club meeting. British Fencing will continue to use the British Fencing database for British Fencing communications to members (so if you change your email address you will need to update both systems).

We may at some point require additional information such as gender and date of birth. This will be for summary statistical reporting only, so that we can identify, for example, how many people between certain age groups participate once a week.

Competitions participating in the rewards scheme may share results files with Lolly Rewards in order that points can be awarded for participating.

The privacy statement for the scheme is here: http://www.lollyrewards.com/britishfencing/#/privacy.

How do Lolly Rewards and British Fencing work together?

Lolly Rewards operates the British Fencing Rewards Points scheme on behalf of British Fencing. To join the scheme, you need to agree to the British Fencing Rewards Scheme Terms and Conditions so Lolly Rewards Limited can create a secure points collector account for you to use. A full set of T&C’s can be found at http://www.lollyrewards.com/britishfencing/#/terms. You may use other services provided by Lolly Rewards but that is your choice at all times  and is subject to agreeing to additional terms and conditions; these will always be clearly indicated.  

More info about the company operating the scheme for us can be found at http://lollyrewards.com.