Running a Club as a Business - Part 2

An interesting article. There were a couple of points I picked up on. The first of these was the recogntion that the majority were not match anglers and/or carp anglers and that clubs loose members by not recognising this. The second point is the one about clubs sending out renewal notices. All of my local clubs do this. A couple of clubs outside my area did not. I would have rejoined these clubs but forgot as I did not get a reminder. I am sure I am not the only one and these clubs must loose members by not sending out renewals.

The greatest failure of most fishing clubs is that the committee gets the idea that they are the club rather than the members and then run the club according to what they want rather than the majority.

Some clubs run through the iron fist of strong secretaries which, very often, is a good thing. But if the wrong kind of secretary gets voted into that post it can be a disaster.

I couldn't agree more, Graham. The best option though, I still believe, is to have a 'benevolent dictator', a good strong secretary who DOES listen to what the members want and gives it to them. I always believed that the money belongs to the members.

However, some committee-men believe that they should save it for the members and become so obsessed with that conception that even when the members want to spend some of it, the committee says "No, we might need it." And it's always - "We might need it." until such time as they lose it because of inactivity.

It doesn't have to be the Secretary either, there's always the "Old Guard" sitting at the top of the table, mates who have known every member down through the ages. These are the overcautious ones, the ones who have implicit faith in the Treasurer, because they think he knows what he's doing just because he plays with the figures which they can't understand anyway.

Believe me, there are not many treasurers of angling clubs know much about keeping books, they're usually a bloody nightmare to understand and often wrong. It's not their fault, they were pushed into the job where the only qualifications are "Two of everything you should have? You're in!"

We'll come on to the Treasurer's roll later if you, dear readers, want me to continue with this series.

Graham,

Out of interest what is the wrong sort of Secretary. From my own experience most club anglers get what they?re given because they can?t be arsed to turn up to monthly meetings and make there views known.

Tony

The worst sort of secretary is the one who is running the club for his own interests rather than the members best interests.

But I agree with you, in most cases the members get what they deserve through apathy.

Thanks, I wasn?t quite sure what you meant and I also should have said what an interesting article by Jeff.

Hi, sorry for bringing up an old topic.

I have just taken over as Secretary of a small fishing club. I was interested in your comments about Data Protection and I was wondering what sort of advie you had on this. We hold the usual details of name, address and contact number and I would like to find out what we need to do to cover ourselves against any mishaps.

You mentioned about having members agree to have the information used by the club, would a simply tick box on a membership form be enough? I am trying to find info on the internet about procedures but am coming up empty.

Any advice gratefully recieved.

The important thing with Data Protection is to only hold the personal data that is appropriate to the function. For a fishing club this usually means name and address and not much more. DOB or age is only needed for juniors or senior citizens assuming you have concessionary rates. Members could voluntarily give phone numbers or email addresses but on the understanding that these would not be passed on to third parties. It is also vital that the data is accurate and not held beyond its useful life. Your members have the right to request to see what you held in your database about them, and you must provide this if requested.

Thanks for the reply.

Currently we hold

Name, address, phone number.

These are only used for our Bailiffs and for a bi-monthly newsletter.

I am thinking of just adding a check box on our membership form which states something along the lines of "Your information will only be used for internal purposes and will not be passed on to third parties, please tick this section to show your agreement.

Would this be enough to cover us.

Sounds good enough to me Ben. Or you could say along the lines

"By submitting your application for membership you agree to the society maintaining your details above on record for the purposes of contacting you further, but be assured that your details will NOT be passed on to any third party and will be treated with the utmost security."

Then as they join, they grant permission. Then you can do like the Government and leave them on a park bench on a floppy disk.

/forum/smilies/big_smile_smiley.gif/forum/smilies/wink_smiley.gif

This is what they ICO site says -

"The Data Protection Act gives individuals the right to know what information is held about them. It provides a framework to ensure that personal information is handled properly.

The Act works in two ways. Firstly, it states that anyone who processes personal information must comply with eight principles, which make sure that personal information is: <ul>[*]Fairly and lawfully processed [*]Processed for limited purposes [*]Adequate, relevant and not excessive [*]Accurate and up to date [*]Not kept for longer than is necessary [*]Processed in line with your rights [*]Secure [*]Not transferred to other countries without adequate protection [/list]

The second area covered by the Act provides individuals with important rights, including the right to find out what personal information is held on computer and most paper records.

Should an individual or organisation feel they're being denied access to personal information they're entitled to, or feel their information has not been handled according to the eight principles, they cancontact the Information Commissioner's Officefor help. Complaints are usually dealt with informally, but if this isn't possible, enforcement action can be taken."

................................................................................

Point five doesn;t mean that you have to delete them immediately the member resigns from the society unless they have asked you to do so. You can keep them on for a couple of more years to remind them that membership is still open to them.

I used to send out a form with their name and address on to save them the trouble of remembering where they lived, but that's as far as I'd go. Instead of DOB, you can always just store the type of member they are - S = senior, J = junior, P = pensioner etc.

Thats just what I was looking for, Many Thanks for the information.

Can I pick your brain's again. Although our club doesn't have a Junior section and doesn't hold any Junior events anymore we do have a few Junior members details held. Would the holders of this information need to be CRB checked?

I have spoken with the CRB office this morning and the chap there said No, but I wanted to see if anyone had any actually experince of this.

Cheers

No, in my opinion.

You only need CRB checking if you're coming into contact with people on an individual basis, ie: on a one-to-one teach-in for example with no-one else around.

I'm afraid my opinion of all the CRB stuff is just bureaucracy gone mad and most of it is started by Councils and other PC minded officials.