# How to Start and Run a Yo-Yo Club - An in depth guide for new and expanding clubs **URL:** \ **Category:** Yo-Yo Contests, Clubs, and Events\ **Created:** [October 29, 2026, 8:16pm UTC](https://forums.yoyoexpert.com/t/how-to-start-and-run-a-yo-yo-club-an-in-depth-guide-for-new-and-expanding-clubs/455825 "2026-10-29T20:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LouVanLanning](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.yoyoexpert.com/louvanlanning/32/604181_2.png) [@LouVanLanning](https://forums.yoyoexpert.com/u/LouVanLanning)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2026, 8:16pm UTC](https://forums.yoyoexpert.com/t/how-to-start-and-run-a-yo-yo-club-an-in-depth-guide-for-new-and-expanding-clubs/455825/1 "2026-10-29T20:16:04Z")
Hey y’all. I have been doing a lot with the Portland yo-yo club for the last few years, and I get questions pretty often about how to make a yo-yo club work. There are a lot of great clubs all over the world, but I have never seen any kind of crash course guide on how to make a club work. So this is my attempt at that. I wrote every word of this with my human brain and hands. No AI. Just personal experience and a few days of figuring out how to make it make sense to other people. Get ready for a lot of words. I hope it helps, or inspires you to start a club! Anyway, enter… **How To Start And Run A Yo-Yo Club** By Lou Lanning Based on my experience with the Portland Oregon Skill Toy Club, Shrimp Gang PDX © 2026 **Forward: The Importance of Community** It is 2026, and community is more important than ever. In a post COVID world so many of our communities exist mostly online. Facebook groups, Discord chats, and forums are great, but nothing can match the experience of a real in person meet up. It is the best way to learn new tricks, try new yo-yos, and arguably most importantly make new friends and connections within our little spinning world. For me personally yo-yo club has become something way bigger than just yo-yo club. Once a month my friends and I look forward to spending five or six hours together in a beautiful sunny park playing with toys. We yo-yo, play kendama, juggle, fly kites, and generally anything that fills your mind and body with an incomparable sense of whimsy. I can say with certainty that this club has improved my life and the lives of others in ways that nothing else could have. If you live in a city that has an active yo-yo or skill toy club I can not recommend enough that you join it. To put it bluntly, yo-yo people tend to be nerds and weirdos. Myself included. Many of the people I have met through this community started out as shy quiet strangers that took a step out of their comfort zone to approach a new group that welcomed them with open arms. Take the step. Join the club. Learn the trick. It ain’t that hard! If you live in a city that doesn’t have a yo-yo club I can not recommend enough that YOU start one. I assume if you are reading this it is because you already have some interest in starting a club. From the start it can seem like a big task. Organizing a large (or even small) group of people can be stressful. Yo-yo should always be the opposite of that, so naturally I want organizing a yo-yo club to remain as stress free as possible as well. As I write this I have been organizing and hosting the Portland yo-yo club for about three years. There have been bumps along the road, but overall it has been impressively smooth. And now I am here to attempt to share the knowledge I have gained in how to start and run your own club and build a local community that will thrive. So let’s get into it! **Chapter One: If You Build It, They Will Come** I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read online “If there was a yo-yo club in my town I would go to it!” My response has always been, “You should start one!” which is generally followed up by, “I don’t know how!” Lemme tell ya friend, it is easy! In its simplest form, a club only needs five things: **1. A name.** There are two schools of thought on this one. Neither of them are wrong, so just go with your gut. Do you want to be “Portland Yo-Yo Club” or do you want to be a little more creative and silly? Think about it. Throw some ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Yo-yo has always and will always be a goofy little toy, so why not give your club a goofy little name? Our club name originated with a joke that was originally intended to just be a place holder, but it ultimately stuck. It has nothing to do with yo-yos. It’s just a funny little thing that always makes people laugh. When someone comes up to me in the wild to ask about yo-yos I always tell them about the yo-yo club and they inevitably ask how to find information on it. I then have to look them in the eye and say “Look up Shrimp Gang PDX on Instagram.” Maybe you want that, or maybe you want the ease of going with the classic “Portland Yo-Yo Club.” **2. A place.** There are some important things to consider when choosing the location for your club. Try to make the location as central as possible so it is easier for more people to get there. Our club meets outdoors in the summer. We rotate between a handful of local parks to change up the scenery and get people out to new places that they may have never visited before. Parks are a great option because generally they don’t require any reservations or charge any money. Make sure you pick one with a restroom if you are going to be there all day, and be ready to show curious bystanders some tricks! Here in the Pacific Northwest it gets pretty wet and cold from October to March, so we take the club indoors for the season. Finding an indoor location can be a little more difficult. Consider the amount of space you will need for the amount of people you anticipate, and then consider that those people will all be swinging chunks of metal and wood around on strings. We previously met in our local mall food court which was perfect. If you have a mall nearby, see if it is a good option. We treated ours like a park and just showed up. Security always thought it was cool to see yo-yo club so we never had any issues. Some clubs opt for a local toy store, arcade, or brewery. Whatever you choose, make sure it is an all ages venue. The kids need yo-yo club! Location can be the most difficult or the easiest part of this entire process. Keep it simple. The best place is a free place, but a free place isn’t always big enough. In the case of our club after our mall was closed down we struggled to find a new indoor location. We ended up finding an all ages music venue that rents us the space for cheap, and covered the rent by having a series of raffles. I’ll go more into that later on. Avoid having to pay for a venue if you can. It makes things a lot easier. **3. A Time.** I have seen many clubs struggle with this part. Getting a group of people to agree on a date is difficult, so I recommend you skip that part. It will be impossible to pick a day that makes everyone happy every time. But that is okay! Ideally you will be having recurring meetings, so anyone who can’t make it can just come to the next one. Instead of having the inevitably complicated “what day works best for everyone” conversation, just pick a day and time and tell people what it is. Announce the date far enough in advance that people can plan to attend. We usually have meets on the third or fourth Saturday of the month and post a flier with details at the beginning of the month. This year I made a schedule ahead of time for the entire season so people had plenty of time to figure out their plans. We meet from 11am - 5pm. Some people love to be there for the entire six hours, and some just pop in for the beginning or end of the meet. Some clubs meet weekly. I applaud this effort and wish I could pull it off, but for better turn outs I find that monthly meets work best. I have started looking into options for smaller weekly meets, but they would probably end up being less of an all ages yo-yo club and more of an after work jam at a bar or cafe. **4. A way to spread information about the club.** This part is very important. You need to let people know about your club. Make a club account on your preferred social media platform. Currently I use Instagram, discord, reddit, the Facebook yo-yo BST group, and the YoYoExpert forum to spread information about our meets. Make a flyer. If you meet in the same place at the same time every month you can reuse the same flyer for every meet. If it moves around or changes details regularly like ours do it is a perfect excuse to make a cool new flyer for every meet. The yo-yo community is jammed full of talented artists and graphic designers so please. PLEASE. Please don’t use AI to make your flyer. This is likely going to be the first thing people see to represent your club. Set the vibe. Make people want to come to a cool event with a cool flyer made by a cool person. Load your flyer up with all the details someone would need to find your club. The name, the place, the time. Make it legible. Remember that most people will be looking at it on a phone screen. Sometimes when we meet at a park we are in a specific part of the park so when I post the flyer online there will be a second image of a map with a pin for the exact location. Spread the word! Post your flyer on the ol’ internet. Get people excited. **5. A person to spread the information.** That is you! As your club grows your people will help spread information to their friends and it will grow even more. We are lucky to have a handful of talented artists in our club that have also contributed their time and work to make some of the best yo-yo club flyers out there. Here are a few examples from the past few years of Portland meets by Laurie Hamilton, Thomas Keane, Zoe Jones, and myself. ![flyer 1](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/7/a/d/7ad8435ea08ed8db3860361bbff15ae69d976003.jpeg) ![flyer 3](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/3/4/4/344f8f0f02343ab7b5d345765bbc1b96fff74c5d.jpeg) ![flyer 2](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/c/5/d/c5d77eb69d609768e1b1a738132fda661dd01efa.jpeg) ![IMG_1460](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/d/5/3/d53d1982206b54c53b4ecfd36470dec1408f9f04.jpeg) ![flyer6](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/e/a/f/eaf9efe3e11121dd815537a4e0aa99d0a7b04da2.jpeg) ![IMG_1459](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/a/b/7/ab795d9e2937f362537e51efe1fd11fd2f4b16eb.jpeg) ![IMG_1461](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/7/0/2/70247856c5baacbb431277c64644a9538cfa6e79.jpeg) ![IMG_1462](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/c/6/e/c6ef157c054b4edf8921abfc31522863431cffc8.jpeg) **Chapter Two: Growth and Expansion** So you have started a club. It has been going well and you have a great group of friends to yo-yo with. Now what? How far do you want to take it? There is so much you can do if you want to do it. One of the best ways to keep your community in contact with each other is a group chat of some kind. Shrimp Gang mostly uses an Instagram chat because that is what was available when the club was first forming. Throwers of the Puget Sound (T.O.P.S.) has a discord chat that is one of the most active local yo-yo chats you will ever experience. A chat is great for sharing clips, teaching and learning tricks, or just showing your friends what yo-yo you brought to work for the day. Discord works extremely well for this because you can separate your chat into channels for specific things like meet planning, buy/sell/trade, and general discussion. You may have noticed that despite the title of this piece specifying yo-yo club, I refer to Shrimp Gang as a skill toy club. Over the last decade or so I have dipped in and out between yo-yo and kendama. When I started playing there was a thriving kendama scene in Portland. The main person who was planning and hosting meets ended up being bitten by the yo-yo bug pretty hard, and the dama meets started to slow down as the yo-yo meets picked up. Opening up our club to other skill toys brought in a whole new group of people that were looking for a community to be a part of, and introduced new people to new skill toys. Our club has started to attract folks from neighboring cities and states that often drive multiple hours to get to Portland. Some of them even have and attend clubs in their own city but still travel for ours because it is always a good time. As our club was growing it seemed like a good idea to have an annual event that is a bit more over the top than the average monthly meet. The Legend of Skill Toy Island happens every July on an island in the Willamette River called Elk Rock. It is a bit more out of the way than the other parks we meet at, but is one of the most scenic and beautiful places in the city. We are coming up on the fourth year for this event and it only gets better every year. We set up a bunch of mini games and were able to gather a handful of prizes from some very generous companies like One Drop, Recess, MK1, and Deal With It. ![flyer 5](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/5/b/c/5bc0db6b1e90bce63991a50dc2159a2add49aee1.jpeg) Shrimp Gang at Return to Skill Toy Island in 2026. Photo by Martín. Here are some of the mini games we have used for the last few years. **Long Sleeper** This one is a classic, and is easy enough for anyone at any skill level to take part in. Get all your participants in a big circle. They can use whatever yo-yo they want. The only models we have disqualified are yo-yos that had previously set or broken the world record for sleep time. This only happened once but it was pretty funny. Start a timer and have everyone throw their strongest sleeper at the same time. From here it is just the last one spinning. BUT! The winner must also perform a clean bind and bring the yo-yo back to their hand to win. So there is a chance that the last one spinning will miss the bind, and whoever went out before them with a clean bind will take the win. **Kwijibo Knockout** This is one of the first tricks that most people learn on modern yo-yo, but once some people progress into more advanced tricks this old stand-by gets forgotten. Get your participants into a circle again. Your first player must complete a full Kwijibo with a clean bind. I usually allow two attempts on the first pass. Move around the circle and knockout anyone who doesn’t hit the trick. If you have a handful of pro level Kwijers this can turn into a game of stamina. If you are lucky you will get to see your friend who grinds the essentials take out two national level competitive players because they just really really know how to Kwijibo thirty times in a row. Shout out Mark Johnson. **Eli Hop Off** Pretty self explanatory. How many clean Eli Hops can you get in a row? This one is less reliant on the clean bind. It is just about the number of hops until you miss one. Hands. Must. Touch. **Shrimp Peel Off** Peel Shrimp, aka Boingy Boing is another repeater trick that is easy to gamify like Eli Hops. It is essentially the same game, but with a trick that is notoriously more difficult. I love this trick, and making it into a regular game made more people in our club grind to get better at it. The player can pick the style of boing they are most comfortable with. Front style, breakaway, over under, etc. A single repeat of this trick consists of a clean forward and backward motion. Count as the yo-yo hits the forward most part of the motion. This one does require a clean bind after the boings. **Treasure Hunt** This one was a hit at the most recent Skill Toy Island jam. It requires zero actual yo-yo skills, and who doesn’t love a good treasure hunt? I got to the spot early and literally buried a yo-yo (Recess Copper Nap. Thank you Tyler!) in the sand in the middle of the area we were using. After the first hour or so when enough people had arrived I announced to everyone that there was a buried treasure in the jam space. The yo-yo was in a plastic bag with the string hanging out and tied to a stick that was placed above the sand with another stick forming an X to mark the spot. Even with twenty or so people actively searching it took about three hours for someone to notice the giant wooden X in the middle of the beach. **Can Blaster 9000** This game was created by Thomas Keane for Skill Toy Island in 2026. He built a PVC pipe frame about six feet tall and suspended three empty soda cans from the top on yo-yo string. The game is played shooting gallery style. The player has thirty seconds to Eli Hop and hit the cans as many times as possible. There are no binds required. The player can rethrow at any point. Hits are counted with a competition style clicker, and a pre dinged stunt yo-yo is provided for anyone who doesn’t want to potentially damage their own yo-yo. **Chester’s Choice Weird Trick Contest** This was Chester Parks’ way to get everyone to show off their weirdest trick. Just go around the meet and ask everyone to show their trick. The weirdest trick wins! Easy as that! This year we started a new annual event to kick off the indoor season. It is called Throw and Throw. One of our members Casey runs a pottery studio called Elemental Studios. Like yo-yoing, the act of making pottery on a wheel is also referred to as throwing so it seemed obvious that these two hobbies should collide. A standard yo-yo meet is awesome, but sometimes throwing in a different hobby is a great way to mix things up and introduce people to a new experience and skill set. ![IMG_1688](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/a/a/5/aa525f1c5915b8eb40c6b9757b9edfce85161afe.jpeg) Casey hitting a tower in the pottery studio at Throw and Throw, 2026. Photo by Jun. **Chapter Three: Club Structure and Politics** This is where it gets hairy. When you say the word club a lot of people immediately default to the classic political structure where you have a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, etc. I want to address this without getting too into the weeds. A political club structure is a slippery slope that I have personally seen many non yo-yo clubs slide right down to the bottom of. As the person planning the majority of the skill toy meets in Portland I have had many people refer to me as “the person in charge.” Generally I just tell people that the club runs itself. I just pick the time and place. Of course there is a bit more to it than that sometimes, but generally I don’t like to think of myself as the one in charge. This club isn’t about me, or who is in charge. It is about everyone having a place where they can feel welcome to enjoy the hobbies that we share. When you add a political structure to your club the list of requirements grows exponentially. Structured clubs need meetings to keep everyone informed of club goings on. The more time that is spent on things like this is time not spent doing the thing that brought you all together in the first place. A meeting to talk about yo-yo club is a lot less fun than just hanging out and yo-yoing. My personal experience with this came from being the president of an automotive club for a decade. We hosted some over the top fun events, but the stress of setting them up got to everyone involved. Meetings led to votes. Votes on everything from what brand of shirt to use for merch to what kind of snacks to provide. Even when it seemed like something insignificant, someone was bummed it didn’t go their way. I eventually stepped away from this position and watched people who had been close friends for years stop talking to each other because of club politics. It was not fun. Keep it fun. Unless you find your club expanding to a level that it becomes difficult for you to handle, I recommend keeping it simple and avoiding the political structure. There are however some “positions” to consider outside of the standard pres., vice pres., etc. that can help keep the club relevant and running. In my experience these positions tend to fill themselves over time, and that is ideal. **Artists / Designers** As mentioned previously in chapter one, art is very important for spreading awareness of your club. When I started hosting meets I was doing most of the art myself, but as anyone who has spent any amount of time making art knows, art is work, and sometimes work is overwhelming and difficult. Try to have a person or two who you can trust to make a sick event flyer or sticker design. Give your artists plenty of notice before you need something finished. **Videographers / Photographers** There is bound to be someone who shows up with a camera ready to film clips. Having something nice and edited together to keep your social pages active between meets works wonders for engagement. Remember, as a form of art, filming and video editing is also a lot of work. Other than that, there most likely isn’t much else you should need. But! If you find yourself needing help, always ask for it. It isn’t worth stressing out over yo-yo club. Make sure you are having fun along with everyone else. If that means adding more structure to your club, and you think you can pull it off, go for it. It works well for some clubs. Just be aware of the issues it can bring up. ![PXL_20260802_195136099](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/yoyoexpert1/original/4X/b/8/a/b8aa9b488750e596dfa09c72db20a211832bccbf.jpeg) Shrimp Gang represents at a T.O.P.S. meet in Olympia Washington, 2026. Photo by Chad. **Chapter Four: Fund Raising** There are a handful of reasons you may end up needing to raise some money for your club. Shirts, stickers, custom yo-yos, the sky is the limit. This year we moved our club into an indoor venue for the winter season that we have to pay to use. This is less fun than cool shirts, but also very important to keep the club running. To keep the club meets accessible to anyone, I wanted to avoid any kind of cost associated with just attending a meet. Yo-yo club is free for everyone. I ended up putting together a series of raffles that has so far proven to be a great way to get people involved and raise money to pay for whatever you need to pay for. The basic raffle goes as follows: **Gather your items** Reach out to some of your favorite brands. Usually you can find a few that are willing to pitch in a few things towards a good cause like a growing club. See if any of your club members have yo-yos or kendamas that they aren’t using that they would donate to a raffle. Buy or donate some stuff yourself if you have to / are able to. Think about non yo-yo specific items that you can work into your raffle. I got my job to donate a DeWalt drill kit to a raffle that went into a beginner string maker’s setup. At the Throw and Throw we raffled off some handmade ceramic bowls and they were one of the hottest raffle items of the day. We have raffled hot sauce, gift cards, t-shirts, and more. Yo-yoers love plenty of things that aren’t yo-yos. **Tickets and pricing** Raffle tickets can be bought online for very cheap. Your local party store probably has them too. We sold tickets for $5 each. **Set up** At the event that you are holding the raffle at, set up a table in a central location where everyone can check it out. Place your raffle items out on the table. Here is an example of how I broke down the items at our last raffle: - Beginner String Maker’s Kit (Drill, hooks, nice nylon thread) - Yo-Yo Maintenance Kit (Bearing tool, 100pk string, pads, acetone, blue towels, string pick) - UNPRLD Yo-Yo, Vintage Disney Yo-Yo Shirt, Kirby Yo-Yo Plush - Kendamas (two nice full setups, and a holster) Each of these lots gets set out on the table with its own dedicated jar for raffle tickets. Participants get their tickets, write their name on them, and then place them in the jar for the item(s) they want to win. After these items were drawn all of the tickets went back into one big jar and were pulled from again to give away five individual yo-yos. The first name picked gets first choice of the five, and the following names get to pick from what is left. The last person called gets the last one left. In our case they were all really great yo-yos so no one was disappointed! We used this same method for the ceramic bowls at the Throw and Throw since there were multiples and lots of people were interested in them. Raffles are really fun. It gives people a chance to support something they love. Ideally everyone will understand how raffles work. Sometimes you buy 10 tickets and win nothing. Sometimes you buy 1 ticket and win the best prize available. I haven’t had any issues, but be ready to tell someone “better luck next time!” **Follow up** Keep track of your raffle money. I have a note in my phone that I list all of my transactions in. Venmo, cash, etc. so I know how much club money there is at any time and where it came from. Keep club money separate from your personal money. Make sure it all goes towards the things it is supposed to go towards. **Conclusion** For now, that is all I have. I am still learning every day, so I will likely add some revisions down the road. A lot of this is circumstantial, and you may not need all of it. Every club is different and has different needs. Whatever bits and pieces you choose to use, I hope they help you build a strong foundation for your own yo-yo club. It will take some effort, but it will be worth it. Don’t forget that this is a club based on toys and it should always be fun! Thanks for reading! Please feel free to DM me if you have any questions or just want to talk clubs!