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 constitution is a legal document that describe how the club’s structure works. This includes when and how the AGM will be run, how many people will be on the committee, and other things like that. Although they are a legal document, there is no requirement that they need to be written or edited by a lawyer. The process for changing the constitution will be outlined in the constitution and typically any member can initiate it – although it’s best to have a read through the relevant pieces of the Incorporated Societies Act 2022 to make sure that it will be consistent with the law.

Incorporated Societies Act 2022

The law that has governed incorporated societies for many years is the Incorporated Societies Act 1908. This has recently been replaced with the Incorporated Societies Act 2022, and we are currently in a transition period. Clubs that were incorporated prior to 2022 must re-apply to the Incorporated Societies Register before a date in 2026, otherwise they will be struck off the register.

The new Act is much longer than the previous one – 270 clauses versus 37 clauses. It’s very likely your club will need to make some changes to its constitution to meet the criteria for re-registration under the new Act. The easiest way to change the constitution is at the AGM, so most clubs have two chances left to get ready – this year’s AGM and next year’s one. The alternative is to call a Special General Meeting to change the constitution, which can be done at any time – but who wants to go to more meetings than they have to?

The Incorporated Societies Register has provided a constitution builder to help clubs prepare for re-registration, as well as a guide on their website on what you’ll need to change to make your constitution compliant. I’ve recently prepared the remits to update my club’s constitution at our AGM and personally I decided not to use the full text generated by the constitution builder because it was very long – 26 pages as opposed to the 5 pages we currently have!

Most of the content the constitution builder put into our constitution did not need to be there legally speaking, but did make the legal requirements of being an incorporated society more explicit. I’ve tried to strike a balance, copying some clauses out of there but removing ones that seemed less relevant to the way our club operates. However, there are more requirements to keep track of than there used to be under the old Act, so I’m also working on a committee handbook to sit alongside our constitution and lay out our obligations under the Act in a more digestable format.

Annual General Meetings

Typically a few things will happen at your club’s Annual General Meeting (or AGM):

• The president will make a brief (maybe) report about what’s been happening with the club and what they hope to see happen in the near future.
• The treasurer will present the club’s annual financial statements. This is a chance for all the members to see what the club is spending its money on and whether it is making a profit.
• A new committee will be elected.
• Any notices of motion that have been submitted will be voted on. The most common reason for notices of motion is to make alterations to the constitution.
• There will be a chance for members to bring up any concerns they have that they would like the incoming committee to address over the coming year.

Some clubs like to combine the AGM with an annual prizegiving ceremony to make it more fun for members to come along to.

Club Committees

A club committee consists of the people elected at an AGM. The exact composition of your club’s committee will be laid out in the constitution, but typically it will include:

• A president, who chairs meetings, helps to push forward any long-running projects, and generally has responsibility for making sure that things get done.
• A vice president, who acts for the president when they are not available. Typically this job doesn’t come with a high workload unless the president becomes ill during the year.
• A secretary, who takes minutes at meetings and deals with correspondence.
• A treasurer, who keeps track of income and expenses, and pays the bills.
• Several general committee members, who divide up responsibility for managing different aspects of the club such as running shows and training, organising fundraisers and applying for grants, maintaining the club’s equipment and clubrooms, hosting the club Christmas party, and keeping members informed about what’s going on.

Clubs differ in how the work is divvied up. Sometimes people will be assigned portfolios, e.g. there might be two people assigned to “fundraising” and they will organise all of the club’s fundraisers for the year. At other clubs it is more project-based, e.g. the club might run four fundraisers over the year and a different person will organise each one.

Remember that a club is made up of all of its members, not just its committee. While committee members take on the onus of responsibility for making sure things get done, that doesn’t mean they have to do all the work themselves. Using the fundraising example, it’ll probably be a committee member who books the sausage sizzle at Bunnings and makes a plan to purchase all the ingredients, but other club members can and should be turning up to help on the day.

Committee Meetings

Most club committees meet monthly. At my club these meetings usually take around 90 minutes. The first meeting with a new committee tends to be a bit longer.

The typical agenda for a committee meeting is similar to that of an AGM:

• The minutes of the previous meeting are accepted. The secretary should distribute these soon after the previous meeting. Committee members should read these to check that the minutes are accurate and that they have remembered to do what they were supposed to do.
• The president asks for brief updates on matters arising from the minutes. This is typically used for one-off things, e.g. “Kate, you said you’d update the admins on the club Facebook page, is that sorted?”
• The correspondence for the last month is presented.
• The treasurer’s monthly report is presented and payments are approved.
• Each committee member gets a chance to talk about their own projects and raise any issues that they’d like to see addressed.

The best way to keep committee meetings short is for the committee to communicate between meetings and for all members to keep up to date with what’s being said. The clubs I’ve belonged to have used email lists and Facebook groups for this purpose. In my opinion Facebook groups are the best (free) option because it’s easier to see the history of what’s been said across the year and to keep comments about a specific topic together. The most important thing though is that everybody uses the same method so that all of the committee members are on the same page.