CWA Blog Archive-8 Ways To Keep Your Climbing Gym Community Engaged During COVID-19

8 Ways To Keep Your Climbing Gym Community Engaged During COVID-19

Pdf Summary

Written in early April 2020, this article helps gyms keep their communities engaged during the pandemic's sudden closures, framing the challenge around the concept of value. It argues that in the world of climbing gyms, value is created fundamentally by building a community that continues to evolve over time, by creating your own company culture and vibe, a place people want to return to again and again. The article poses the crisis directly: what happens when a global pandemic forces your community to scatter literally overnight, does the community vanish into thin air? As predominantly bricks-and-mortar businesses, climbing gyms were scrambling to figure out how to keep membership engaged and thereby continue a stream of membership revenue (albeit reduced) to get through closures. The stakes are existential, keeping the community engaged could be the difference between riding out the crisis and being forced to close permanently. The core challenge it frames: how to keep communities engaged, provide valuable content, and create not just a short-term fix but long-term value for the organization. Encouragingly, it asserts there are plenty of opportunities to engage folx during this time, inviting operators to think outside of (the text trails off, but the promise of eight concrete engagement methods is established). The throughline is that maintaining community engagement during pandemic closures was existentially important for climbing gyms, because their fundamental value lies in community, and keeping that community connected virtually could determine whether a gym survived or closed forever. Since climbing gyms create value through evolving community, culture, and a sense of belonging that draws members back, the sudden scattering of that community by COVID-19 threatened the very foundation of their worth, and their revenue. The article reframes the crisis as a solvable challenge with abundant opportunities, urging gyms to think creatively about engaging members, providing valuable content, and building long-term (not just stopgap) value. By promising eight concrete engagement strategies, it equips operators to actively preserve their communities through closure rather than watching them dissolve. For gyms facing the terrifying prospect of permanent closure, the article both underscores why community engagement is mission-critical and offers practical, resourceful approaches to keep members connected, content flowing, and the community, and its associated revenue and loyalty, intact through the crisis and into eventual recovery.

Asset Caption

Written in early April 2020, this piece frames keeping community engaged during closures as existentially important, since gyms create value through evolving community, and losing it could mean closing forever. It offers eight concrete engagement strategies to keep members connected, deliver valuable content, and build long-term rather than just short-term value through the crisis.