April 2024 - Five Fault Club

How NZ Agility Works: The Club Level

This post is one of a three-part series on how our sport is administered in New Zealand. I hope it will be useful for newer agility folk, especially those who are curious about how to get involved in the running of their club.

Incorporated Societies

Almost all dog clubs in NZ are incorporated societies. An incorporated society is a separate legal structure – a bit like a company – which keeps the financial affairs of the club separate from those of its members. The key feature of incorporated societies is that they must not be run for the profit of their members, e.g. they can’t pay dividends to their members.

A club becomes an incorporated society by applying to the Incorporated Societies Register, part of the Companies Office. The club needs to submit an annual return to the register with details about its officers, its financial returns, and any changes made to its constitution. Incorporated societies can also become registered charities on the Charitable Trusts Register (also managed by the Companies Office) but most dog clubs don’t, because this creates more paperwork for little additional benefit.

The Future of DogsNZ Governance

DogsNZ are currently consulting with members about modernising their government structure. In a previous post I described how things work currently – now I’ll share my own thoughts about what’s going well and what could be better.

Representation

Currently 84% of votes at ACOD belong to one code. The only change to the voting structure in recent decades has been the separation of agility from the Dog Training Committee, resulting in 4 extra votes at the table for non-breed show people, but we are still very under-represented.

Over those decades, pedigree dog registration and participation in breed showing has been declining. I’m not a member of a breed club but I’ve heard a few stories lately about how much these clubs struggle to find volunteers to organise their shows.

In the meantime, other codes have been growing in popularity. Two new codes have emerged – rally-o and scentwork – and soon we will have hoopers trials too. An increasing number of people are involved in multiple disciplines, which makes it difficult to categorise members into distinct blocs for voting purposes.

How NZ Agility Works: The National Level

This post is one of a two-part series on how our sport is administered in New Zealand. DogsNZ are currently conducting consultation on changes to their structure, but I thought an explainer on how things currently work would be helpful for newer agility folk who want to understand what’s going on.

Dogs New Zealand (DNZ/NZKC)

Dogs New Zealand is the new name for what used to be called the New Zealand Kennel Club. It is basically a federation of clubs that are involved in dog showing and dog sports.

All clubs that run agility shows (or any other shows) must belong to Dogs NZ, but not all clubs are considered equal. There are “affiliated” clubs, which run championship all-breeds conformation shows. Then there are “associated” clubs, which are all the rest – the ones that run conformation shows which are limited to particular breeds, and the ones that run shows in any of the other codes under the DogsNZ umbrella – agility, obedience, rally-o, scentwork, tracking/working trials etc.

All people who compete in championship agility events (or in championship shows for most other DogsNZ codes) must be individual DogsNZ members. They must also be members of a DogsNZ member club, and that is how they get representation in DogsNZ decisions – individuals don’t have a lot of power to get things done within the DogsNZ structure.

DogsNZ has a small paid workforce of about 8 people who look after the admin and accounting of the organisation. These are the people who send you the bill for your membership each year, collate and publish the Dog World, do most of the show secretary work for the National Dog Show, and much more besides. Some of them have been with DogsNZ for quite a few years and I’ve usually found them very helpful.

Annual Conference of Delegates (ACOD)

The Annual Conference of Delegates is the DogsNZ equivalent of an AGM – the place where the members get together to discuss the direction of the club, elect a new batch of officials, and vote on any substantial changes that have been proposed. It happens in Wellington each winter.