Our New Charitable Status
Published 20:23 on 16 Jan 2020
16th January 2020
Dear Member,
Happy New Year and welcome to our Club's 150th year of operation. We intend this year to be one of celebration and transformation, and look forward to welcoming you all to fully participate in the club's activities.
Sunday 12th January was a momentous day for Thames Sailing Club as it was agreed that the Club becomes a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. This provides the benefits of enshrining the purpose of the club as an amateur sports club for the benefit of the community, limiting the liability of the members to zero, and being in a significantly better position to receive grants and apply for gift aid. The Club will still rely on you, its members, to manage and run the activities, and thus we are all vital for the club's continued success.
Our Constitution, Rules and Bye laws have changed, and these can be found on the club website here. There are not many changes to the Rules and Bye laws, just those need to ensure that they tie into the new constitution and to remove overlap. The Constitution has changed quite significantly in that it follows a fairly prescriptive format set out by the Charities Commission. The main differences being:
- The purpose of the club is set out in its Charitable Objects
- The Trustees oversee the management of the club in all aspects. The Flag officers are Trustees and there are up to 4 "Elected Trustees", thus a maximum of 8 Trustees with a minimum of 3.
- All members have an equal vote, and voting on resolutions may now include proxy, postal and electronic means as determined by the Trustees.
- It is not possible to have Honorable Life Members as the club can no longer provide a benefit without being remunerated.
Beyond this we have had to re-jig the membership fee structure. We have determined that there is a baseline Membership fee (£50) with Participation Fees for the use of facilities which are charged on an annual basis. This means that a Sailing Member fee is £175, a Sailing Family Membership is £285 and a SUP member is £75. Those members that were in the past defined as Honorary, Social or Country are now Members without having to pay any form of participation fee, and so are only charged £50. If there are any questions related to this then please get in touch with myself or any other Trustee.
The Club property will transfer from the names of the Trustees that have held it on behalf of the membership into Thames Sailing Club. We thank the long-standing Trustees for their guardianship and guidance over the years to successive Flag Officers and Committee members.
Membership notices will be coming out shortly and the AGM will be held on the 23rdFebruary at 3pm.
The focus for the General Committee will be to complete the transfer of activities to the Charity and to get some momentum behind fundraising for the new Boat Storage and Changing Rooms.
I wish you all a very successful 2020 and look forward to seeing you on the water.
Best wishes for 2020.
Miles Palmer
Commodore