Central to our club is its constitution. It sets some rules for how the club must be run.
Formality for informality
Like all constitutions, it’s formal and dense to read. It’s a legal document, yet most of us in the club don’t have any legal background. For those of us on the committee, we need to be familiar enough with it to know what we must do proactively — such as hold an Annual General Meeting (AGM) — and also recognise when something that comes up is governed by it. There’ll typically be people on the committee who are more familiar with it and can help work through it.
But remember, it doesn’t dictate everyday decisions. You can get a lot done in the club without needing to jump through bureaucracy or ceremony. One of the benefits of reading the constitution is knowing when you can do things simply, which is often.
Why do we need a constitution?
As a community-based sporting club, you might wonder why we need a formal constitution.
In Australia, incorporated sporting clubs are required to have a constitution. This document forms the legal and governance foundation of our club. It enables us to operate as an incorporated, not-for-profit association and ensures we meet our regulatory obligations.
Having a constitution allows us to:
- Provide continuity and clarity in how the club is governed, regardless of changes in committee members over time.
- Operate as a recognised not-for-profit organisation.
- Affiliate with Masters Swimming Australia, which provides insurance coverage, official recognition and access to sanctioned Masters competitions.
- Establish clear processes for membership, decision-making, financial management and risk management.
In short, our constitution protects the club, its members and its volunteers, and ensures we can continue to operate responsibly and sustainably.
Showing its age…
The constitution was written some time ago, and some parts no longer make as much sense. If you’re thinking of joining the committee, here are a couple of important examples that may have had you scratching your head while reading the role descriptions:
- The Recorder on the committee is supposed to be responsible for keeping all the records of competition results … but we’re in the twenty-first century now and this is all kept electronically by MSA. In practice this means that the Recorder doesn’t officially need to do much, so the role effectively functions as a general committee position.
- The Nominations Officer is mentioned as a committee position, but otherwise isn’t mentioned at all. Currently this is being informally interpreted by some as: helping members understand how the AGM works, how they can nominate, and encouraging participation. It’s possible that whatever the position was supposed to be in charge of made more sense before email.
We’d love to update some of these and other parts of the constitution, but to do that we also need to abide by the constitution, which, given our current size, makes amendment difficult. It requires more members to attend in person than we can typically gather. In fact, that’s one of the things that we’re interested in changing about the constitution.
Michael Harry is currently working on a new draft of the constitution, and is looking for any assistance and feedback. You can reach out to Michael on the Adelaide Masters WhatsApp chat, or by the club email.
