Club Seminar - 4 September 2010
We held the first Club Seminar at Glenmore Lodge at the MCofS Annual Meet on 4 September 2010.
Director for Clubs, Ron Payne, introduced and chaired the meeting, and has provided a report on proceedings.
The programme included the following presentations and handouts which are available to download:
Promoting your Club: Richard Johnson, volunteer
Young People and Mountaineering: David Gibson (MCofS)
Membership Database Update: Peter Willimott, Database Project Manager (volunteer)
Data Protection: David Gibson (MCofS)
Civil Liability Insurance: Andy Goulbourne, Perkins Slade
Civil Liability Insurance - Frequently Asked Questions
For further information on any of the above topics, please contact David Gibson using the contact form.
Club Seminar Report by Ron Payne
This was our first Club Seminar. It was held at Glenmore Lodge on the 4th September alongside the Annual Meet and AGM. It was a beautiful, sunny even warm day. Would anyone want to sit indoors attending the Seminar? Well they did and I counted well over twenty and when we had to put out more chairs it was clear it was going to be a successful event.
I commenced the Seminar by welcoming everyone and introducing myself as the Director for Clubs. This was my first full year in post and the first full year of changes in governance enacted at the last EGM. A challenging and busy year, setting agendas, agreeing remits, activating the Clubs Advisory Group, establishing the Voting Review Working Group and taking the Huts Advisory Group under my wing.
I reviewed the work of the past year. The Voting Review which concluded with the retention of the status quo. The Club Questionnaire which has given us an insight into clubs. These seminal pieces of work will influence us for some time to come. News4Clubs has been a useful service and presentational improvements are in the pipeline. Even this seminar needed planning. Subscriptions. The Huts Advisory Group unobtrusively working to improve our club owned huts and keep them legal.
A question posed last year was how can the CAG influence the Board and the answer lies in the work carried out in the past 12 months. Work which will continue this year. Even the BMC have noticed and I will speak to their Club Seminar in October. Engaging with Clubs is difficult. The CAG must become more relevant to Clubs. Registration cards will be issued to Clubs and a national discount scheme will be established.
I finished by thanking the members of the CAG, VRWG and HAG for all their hard work and contributions during the year.
The subject of the first talk was Children and Young People in Clubs. David Gibson took us through some of the complexities of the subject. The legislation itself is even confused in defining children. Adulthood can start at 16 or 18 years depending on the context. However the latest advice, which is hot off the press, is that clubs may take on young people, particularly the 16 and 17 year old group, without all the formalities of disclosure checks although it is recommended to consider the appointment of a Youth Officer. Let us hope this removes a potential barrier to young people joining clubs.
Peter Willimot next took us on history tour of our Membership Databases. Until recently this was an 'Access' based system. It was getting creaky with some undesirable traits associated with club updating. The BMC developed a system in which we had an interest however it ran late and was becoming expensive for us. Then Sportscotland developed a database system for Governing Bodies. This was working and affordable. It is based on a member record which is then linked to a club or clubs. It is now installed and operational. It is hoped that clubs will provide extra data on members as part of our equity commitment. It is a web based system and a web updating facility is being developed however this will be dependant on training clubs in its use.
Richard Johnson from the Black Rock Club then talked about Promoting Your Club. To address declining membership it is necessary to raise your club profile. Question what members like and dislike and why they leave. Use the media, websites, print, links to other groups, club members and above all social media. He finished with a short thought provoking video on the rise of socal media websites such as facebook, twitter and youtube.
Data Protection is a source of concern to many clubs however David Gibson showed that this should not be the case with a few simple rules. The key message is not to do anything.
The Civil Liability Insurance can usually be relied on to provoke questions and raise concerns. To answer and allay these Andy Goulbourne of the brokers Perkins Slade addressed the Seminar. The CLI is a defensive policy and you cannot claim against yourself. It covers everyone, including officers of Clubs, trustees, directors against any legal liability which includes negligence, defamation and abuse. The cover extends to informal club activities including guests and introductory members although only for two meets. A Frequently Asked Questions booklet has been produced and was available at the meeting. In answer to a question the MC of S has a good claims history however there is a potentially very large claim pending elsewhere and courts are now awarding costs between 5 and 10 million pounds.
To round off the seminar David Hallam of Summit Financial Services talked briefly on the subject of Life Insurance for Climbers. This can occasion challenges for an industry which traditionally does not understand mountaineering. They specialise in providing this product covering climbing in the UK and aboard up to 4000m.
Feedback after the seminar was very positive. The challenge now is go away and plan for another equally successful seminar next year. My thanks to all the speakers.
Ron Payne, 10 September 2010
