Club Constitutions

Match the document to the club's complexity, not its ambitions. The short form suits a small club with simple activities, modest funds and a single committee. The long form earns its length where there is a bar or premises, employees, valuable equipment, several classes of membership or higher membership numbers, because those are the areas where detailed rules prevent disputes. Both are drafted for unincorporated, member-owned, non-charitable clubs.

Eight essentials: the club's name and objects, who can join and how membership ends including expulsion with fair procedure, subscriptions, the committee's composition, election and powers, general meetings and voting, control of money and property including holding trustees, how the constitution is amended and what happens to assets on dissolution. The dissolution clause matters more than anyone expects, member-owned assets have to go somewhere. Both templates cover all eight.

It hard-wires HMRC's conditions into the rules: membership open to the whole community without discrimination, affordable fees, the main purpose being participation in an eligible amateur sport, limits on paying players, income and property applied to the club's sporting purposes and a dissolution clause sending surplus assets to another CASC, a sports governing body or a charity. HMRC reads the constitution when you apply, so the drafting is the registration case.

Follow its own amendment clause, usually a resolution at a general meeting with a stated majority and notice period. If your constitution has no amendment clause the position is awkward, unanimity may be needed, which is itself the best argument for adopting a modern constitution with a workable amendment rule. Record the change in the minutes, date the new version and, if you are a CASC, check the amendment does not breach HMRC's conditions before passing it.