Our aims

Our aims will be:

· Enabling the Club to run more smoothly and effectively, and making it more enjoyable to take on a voluntary role of any kind

· Reducing the risk for members of the General Committee, and for the Membership in general

· Ensuring that the Club remains true to its object of being a sports club

We will also balance respecting and celebrating the Club’s traditions with modernising where this is necessary.  

General

We should focus our work on becoming incorporated, ie changing our governance so that we become a company. This would be a not-for-profit company, ie one where any surpluses go back into the Club.

However, we will keep an open mind to other solutions - and please let us know, using the feedback form at the bottom of this page, if you have any ideas about this.

We should also clarify and update those parts of our governance which are not serving us well.

Maintaining and strengthening Member powers and rights

Club Members currently have a set of powers and rights. There are no plans to remove these, and in fact, they are protected by law. These powers and rights include

• There will be no big changes to the constitution without Member approval – and Members will have the power to challenge minor changes
• The Members will elect the General Committee.
• The Members delegate the running of the Club to the General Committee – the General Committee will then get on with the job.
• The General Committtee are answerable to the membership , so the Members can remove a person/people from the General Committee
• There will be a meeting of the Members every year (ie the Annual General Meeting), at which the General Committee will give a report of the year and present the accounts. This will also be an opportunity for the Members to question the Committee
• A certain number of Members (the number to be decided later) can require the General Committee to either call an Extraordinary General Meeting (currently called an SGM), or to add a motion to the AGM.
• Members will be able to vote at EGMs and AGMs

For clarity, these are not the only Member powers – they are just the most important and well-known ones. We are also aware that the updated constitution will need to be clear about the different rights that each category of Member will have, eg visiting, junior, associate etc.

How we will work

There is already a standard template constitution (known as Articles of Association) for a limited company – this is provided by the government, and is part of the Companies Act 2006.

We will use this as a starting point, as it is tried and tested, and used by hundreds of thousands of companies.

We also have access to many other organisations’ Articles, which are based on this original template and tailored to suit their individual circumstances by specialist lawyers.

Our Club will have many similarities with these organisations (eg other Yacht Clubs, other not-for-profit companies), so we can re-use their text at minimal effort and cost.

That's it for now! Please scroll down a little bit more and give us your feedback.