New Clubhouse Officer Role

At the May meeting of the Clubhouse Management Committee (CMC) it was decided to create a new "role" within the CMC to be known as "Clubhouse Officer".  The role has been ratified and financial authority given at the June CMC yesterday.

Concept

The role of Clubhouse Officer is about empowering one CMC member to take decisions quickly, as opposed to burdening a single CMC member with the responsibility of providing an array of services to members.  For that we will still rely upon the good nature and dedication of all of our members to step-up and volunteer together with a clubhouse subcommittee.

This is not a case of adding a further person to CMC (which would require a constitutional change) but is simply defining a role that a named person who would already be sitting on CMC would take on. This new unpaid role is distinct from the concept of a Clubhouse Manager (paid or otherwise) if appointed in future.

The role of Clubhouse Officer will always be unpaid to avoid any potential conflict of interest that might arise if a paid Clubhouse Manager were to sit directly on CMC.

It is expected that when the 2 x General Committee Members are being elected at the Annual General Meeting, that the need to have a Clubhouse Officer among the elected CMC members will be considered by the members.

What if no-one of CMC wants the role?

In the event of a future CMC being elected where no single member is willing to take on this role, most financial decisions will revert to full CMC meetings... as has been the case to date this season.

Why?

• This is as a result of a year of experience of running the clubhouse in "unpaid volunteer" mode, and the difficulties we've had from time to time in coordinating rotas, opening hours, bookings and maintenance.
• There is a need to have one nominated individual that is empowered to make operational decisons (such as maintenance, opening hours, volunteer coordination, stock levels and cleaning etc) without needing to take matters to a full CMC meeting.
• The clubhouse subcommittee (which should meet monthly) is responsible for management and good running of all aspects that relate to our clubhouse premises, private hire and bar operations. This is currently chaired by the Treasurer, but it was felt that this is too much to manage alongside other treasury duties.
• To enable the treasurer to focus on financial reporting, planning, budgeting and banking.
• If the club should ever decide to employ a paid (or unpaid) Clubhouse Manager, past experience has shown that it is necessary to have a single point of contact on the CMC to liaise between CMC and to manage them.  If the club were to outsource Clubhouse Management to a 3rd party, then again, a liaison point would be necessary.

What the role can do

Among other things, the clubhouse Officer will be empowered to:

• Coordinate bar volunteers and agree duty managers
• Manage a clubhouse manager in future if required (but CMC would need to approve the appointment of any paid manager)
• Manage the cleaner
• Chair the clubhouse subcommittee
• Decide on opening hours (guided by the subcommittee)
• Purchase and maintain stock levels to agreed stockholding limits agreed from month to month by the Treasurer and CMC (bar stock and cleaning materials)
• Agree private hires and other such bookings
• Agree spend up to £150 per item on maintenance/replacement subject to a £500 maximum in a rolling 90 day period, and declaration of all expenditure immediately to the Treasurer and monthly to CMC.

Appointment

Ryan Kuleszka, one of our current General Committee Members, has kindly agreed to take on this role until the end of his current term on CMC.  This has been agreed by CMC and takes immediate effect.

At the time of writing, it is Ryan's intention to stand again at the AGM for one of the General Committee Member vacancies and to carry out this new role next season if elected.

Andrew Hesselden

Secretary

14th June 2012