BMABA operates two distinct directory and mapping tools. They are often mentioned together and share some underlying infrastructure, but they serve different audiences, have different purposes, and work in fundamentally different ways. This article explains both.
The BMABA Club Finder
The Club Finder is a public-facing tool hosted at bmaba.org.uk/club-finder. It is designed for parents, students, and anyone searching for a martial arts class. No login is required to use it.
The Club Finder displays verified, opted-in BMABA member clubs on an interactive map of the United Kingdom. Visitors can search by club name or town, filter by martial arts style, and switch between a map view and a list view. Clicking a pin or listing card opens a full profile for that club, showing details the instructor has chosen to share publicly: their club name, a description, class times and locations, age ranges, teaching styles, a logo and banner image, social media links, verified credential badges, and a contact form.
The contact form is the only way a visitor can reach an instructor through the Club Finder. Contact details are never displayed publicly. When someone submits an enquiry, it is delivered to the instructor's secure Enquiries Inbox on MyBMABA, and a notification is sent to their registered email address. Under UK GDPR, instructors may only use enquiry information to respond to that specific enquiry and must not use it for marketing without explicit consent.
Listings on the Club Finder are created and managed by the instructor themselves through their MyBMABA portal. Participation is voluntary and opt-in. Instructors who have not set up a full listing may still appear as an approximate anonymous marker on the map, indicating that a BMABA-registered instructor is active in that region, but their name, club, and specific location remain hidden until they add a proper class pin. Anonymous markers are offset from the instructor's real location by a randomised distance of between half a mile and two and a half miles to protect privacy.
Each class session is added as a separate pin, meaning an instructor who runs sessions at multiple venues will have multiple pins on the map. Each pin shows the venue, the days and times the class runs, the age range, and the styles taught. This allows students to search for classes that are convenient for them specifically, rather than just finding the instructor's primary address.
The Club Finder ranks at or near the top of Google search results for the majority of searches that parents and students make when looking for martial arts classes in the UK, and receives over 60,000 visits per month. Participation is free for all active BMABA members. Instructors who hold a BMABA Club Colours licence receive additional visibility: their pins appear with a distinctive crown marker, their listing is sorted above standard listings, and they are badged as a BMABA School of Excellence.
The Members Map
The Members Map is a separate tool available only to logged-in BMABA members at mybmaba.org.uk/members-map. It is not accessible to the public. Its audience is Lead Instructors and Management Account holders, and its purpose is professional networking between instructors rather than student recruitment.
Where the Club Finder helps the public find classes, the Members Map helps instructors find each other. Use cases include finding sparring partners, organising interclub events, sourcing external examiners for gradings, building competition squads, and identifying collaboration opportunities with other clubs.
Each member appears as a pin on the map at approximately their registered town, offset by up to a set number of miles for privacy. Clicking a pin opens a profile showing the instructor's club name, the martial arts styles they teach, and the types of collaboration they are open to. Members set their own preferences through a preferences panel, indicating what kinds of connection they welcome. Networking is always enabled as a baseline; other options such as sparring, interclub events, external examining, and competition squad building can be selected or deselected.
Members can filter the map by martial arts style, by connection type, or to show only clubs they are already connected with on the platform. A first-visit modal prompts new users to set their preferences before exploring, so other instructors immediately have useful information when they find the pin.
Visibility on the Members Map is optional. Members who prefer not to appear can opt out entirely through their preferences, and their pin will be hidden. Location data is shown at town level only and is never more precise than that.
How the two tools differ
The key distinction is audience and intent. The Club Finder is for the public. It is outward-facing, built for discoverability on search engines, and designed to generate genuine student enquiries for instructors. The Members Map is for members. It is internal to the MyBMABA platform, not indexed by search engines, and designed to support professional relationships between instructors.
An instructor can participate in one, both, or neither. Opting in to the Club Finder does not automatically make an instructor visible on the Members Map, and vice versa. The two systems share some underlying data such as membership status and verified credentials, but they have separate consent flows, separate privacy controls, and are managed through different parts of the MyBMABA portal.
Both tools are included with an active BMABA membership at no additional cost.
Verified badges
Both tools surface BMABA-verified credentials where relevant. On the Club Finder, verified credentials such as DBS status, safeguarding qualifications, first aid, insurance, and CHIMA certification are displayed as badges on a club's public listing. These are pulled directly from the instructor's BMABA membership record and are only shown as verified when BMABA has confirmed the relevant documentation. They cannot be self-applied. A standard disclaimer is shown on all listings noting that BMABA is not a statutory regulator and that visitors should conduct their own due diligence.
For instructors: getting started
Instructors who wish to appear on the public Club Finder should log in to mybmaba.org.uk and navigate to Resources, then Club Listing. From there they can set up their profile, upload a logo and banner image, and add class pins for each venue and session they run. A pin requires at minimum a postcode and town; once saved, the system automatically geocodes the location and the pin appears on the public map within a few minutes.
Instructors who wish to configure their Members Map visibility and networking preferences should visit mybmaba.org.uk/members-map, where they can set their preferences and opt in or out at any time.