From: Dave Middlemas
Sent: 28 October 2007 21:13
To: Valley Striders (Bob Jackson)
Cc: 'Paul White'
Subject: Constitution (and Committee!)
Sun 28 Oct
Bob/Paul/Sylvia/Geoff – following on from the AGM, please
find below my first thoughts on revising the VS constitution (Bob – pls could
you forward this message onto Sylvia and Geoff).
Perhaps I should just start by saying that my “qualifications”
for commenting on what follows are that my day job is to advise voluntary organizations
on issues such as legal/charitable status and governance (indeed some of
resources linked to below have been produced by my employer). However, I should
emphasise that in my job I can only work with organisations in
I suppose the first thing to say is that the discussion
about revising the constitution prompts a potentially equally extensive
discussion about the existing Committee of VS. As mentioned on my original email
to Bob, whilst one main reason for working to an updated constitution is to
allow all members to have a common understanding of club rules, the other is to
clarify exactly who is responsible for what. At present, the “Committee” is the
collective name we give to our “club officials”, ie - anyone who has volunteered
to be responsible for an area of the club’s activities (or whose regular seat
at Leo’s happens to coincide with the location of committee meetings!).
However, my view would be that the roles and responsibilities
of a Committee of a voluntary organisation are
different and more extensive than our current definition. I’d urge you at this
point to have a look through the publication “What Management Committees Need
to Know” (see link below – 1). The conventional
responsibilities of a Committee are summarised on
p.25 as: Direction, Accountability, Personnel Management, Legal
Responsibilities, Managing Resources and Managing Itself. In practice this includes:
·
establishing the organisation’s
aims and values and ensuring they are kept to
·
planning for the future of the organisation
·
taking into account members’ views
·
liaising with other organisations
·
managing volunteers
·
understanding the organisation’s
legal status and liabilities of Committee members (it’s probably worth highlighting
at this point that financial liability of an unincorporated association like VS
ultimately rests on the individuals on the Committee – Committee members should
probably be aware of that!)
·
understanding the organisation’s
governing document (constitution) and ensuring that it is kept to
· policies and procedures, where required
·
being responsible for the finances and any property/equipment
·
managing risks – financial, health and safety, insurance
etc
·
ensuring the committee
itself functions effectively, eg – holds regular,
minuted meetings.
Hope this doesn’t sound too scary (it isn’t meant to), but
this list is probably well over and above what members probably think they are
taking on when they volunteer to be cross-country rep or whatever!
So, my initial suggestion is that we should make a distinction
between our “club officials” and our “Committee” (which at present are the same
thing) by electing a new Committee at the same meeting at which we adopt a
revised constitution. The new Committee would be made up of members comfortable
with taking on a Committee’s full responsibilities and would work to the
provisions of the revised constitution.
And so on to the constitution, and please find attached
my initial revised draft. I’ve based it on the Bradford CVS model constitution
for unincorporated associations (see link – 2) which I’m familiar with and is
regularly updated. However, to give it a VS/athletics club “flavour”, I’ve
taken various bits from the old VS constitution (see our website) and the UK
Athletics model constitution (see link – 3).
Before going into the detail, it’s probably worth emphasising initially that in proposing a revised constitution,
I am assuming that we will be retaining our existing legal structure/status,
namely that of a simple unincorporated association. There are theoretically
several choices of structure/status (such as company, Community Amateur Sports
Club, charity etc) that could influence what a constitution looks like.
However, my view is that (certainly for the time being, as things can get
fiendishly complicated on this subject), we keep things as simple as possible
and stay as we are!
Looking at the revised draft, you may want to have a think
about the following wording:
·
Name: is it Valley Striders or Valley Striders Athletics
Club (or anything else)?
·
Objects: to keep things as simple as possible I
have just adapted the wording from the old VS constitution.
·
Should officers (ie –
Chair, Secretary, Treasurer) be elected by members (as at present) or by the Committee
itself?
·
AGM: appointment of independent examiner, if required
(although I’m aware that we don’t have our accounts independently examined, and
don’t need them to be, it’s conventional to include this in a constitution in
case we ever should).
·
Quorums for general and Committee meetings
·
Officers – in connection with my earlier
comments, the constitution assumes that there would only be 3 officer roles on
the Committee (Chair, Secretary and Treasurer); the other existing roles (which
are better described as volunteer or ceremonial roles) would not be directly
connected to being on the Committee.
·
Number on the Committee – I have suggested a
minimum of 6 and maximum of 10.
·
Number of Committee meetings – I have suggested
at least 3 separate, minuted Committee meetings per year (I am of course
assuming that we will continue to have ongoing informal meetings as at present
as well).
·
2 cheque signatories –
is this as at present?
The final point to make, as alluded to earlier, is that
to adopt a revised constitution we would need to call a Special General
Meeting, as per the requirements of the constitution (and at the same time, I
suggest, elect a new Committee).
I think that’s enough for the moment! Let me know what you
think. I appreciate that I am suggesting some relatively major changes here, so
we can take this as quickly or slowly as necessary. If we all need to meet up
to talk about it let me know.
Hope this is useful.
Dave
Links to documents:
1. What Management Committees Need to Know: see under Other
Publications on http://www.bradfordcvs.org.uk/publications.htm
2. Bradford CVS model constitution for unincorporated associations: see “Model Constitution” under Information Sheets on www.bradfordcvs.org.uk/publications.htm
3. UK Athletics model constitution: see Sample Constitution – Running Clubs on http://www.ukathletics.net/clubs/club-officer