On Thurs 30th Nov, your club committee members held a meeting to discuss future development of the club and agree an action plan to allow us to continue to build on the successes of the last few years.
The club has grown since the Covid pandemic and whilst this is fantastic to see, it does mean that it has brought some challenges. We have already addressed some of these by streamlining the membership process for example and moving it all online, making it as easy as we can for new members to join our fantastic club. We continue to see a steady increase in our membership and thank you to everyone who invests their running time in being part of YPH.
We have also changed the way we hold stock of kit, partially to aid our cashflow. We no longer hold any stock, meaning we don't have to buy large numbers of Postal shirts and then having to store them for months, typically leaving us with lots of unused shirts years later. This process is also completely online now with new members having their shiny new Postal shirts delivered direct to their door straight from our supplier and all existing members having the option to purchase from our online club shop, including our very bright new evening wear shirt!
We wanted to share the details of what we discussed on Thursday. Much of it remains a work in progress but we are heading in the right direction.
As part of our plan, we will be advertising committee vacancies in due course so please get in touch at the time if you would like more information or would like to get involved.
The most important action for us at present is with regard to our relationship with England Athletics (EA). Being affiliated with EA brings us numerous benefits such as race entry discounts and insurance but it also gives us credibility. It is important that we continue to be a member of our governing body.
EA have 7 club standards that they would like all affiliated clubs to meet. We currently do not meet all 7 of these standards and this is one of the action plans we have in place to address that. It isn't an urgent problem by any means but we feel that there may come a time when EA stipulate that all members have to meet the standards and if they don't then they won't be able to be affiliated until they do so what we are doing is effectively future proofing the club.
The standards are as follows:
Have a written constitution
Have a committee
Have a grievance & disciplinary policy
Have a GDPR policy
Have an inclusion & diversity policy
Implement a club safeguarding code of conduct
Have a health & safety policy
The good news is that much of this is relatively easy to put in place and members of the committee between them have taken ownership of the individual standards. EA provide appropriate templates that we can adapt for our own use.
Of course this isn't just about writing a policy and displaying it on our website. It's about making sure it is visible and works in real life so these standards will become regular features of committee meetings and you will see them referenced more in our communications.
Having the standards in place puts another strong foundation in place for us to build on in the future and knowing that EA support our work in achieving that is important.
As part of the safeguarding policy, we will shortly be contacting all members to ask you to complete a form that will hold your contact details including in case of emergency contacts. We won't share your personal data with anyone else in relation to this and we will only use it should we need to contact someone in the event of anything untoward happening during a training session for example. Apologies to our newest members who will have recently provided some of their details but we will be contacting everyone to obtain this information in a format that allows our club coach's to access it easily should the need arise.
In addition to the EA club standards, we also talked about a number of other matters and these were as follows:
Future AGM's will be on the 2nd Wednesday in April so they come as soon as possible after our year end. The AGM in 2024 will therefore be on 10th April. We chose the 2nd Weds to avoid potential clashes with Easter and school holidays. Holding it on a Weds also gives us the advantage of being a club training night so should help with attracting more members to the AGM. A shortened training session will be held before the AGM and is open to any members wishing to take part.
Committee meetings will be held quarterly in July, Oct and Jan (plus the AGM in April).
The committee membership at present is Ian Dalton (Chair), Bill Shively (Membership), Kevin Armstrong (Treasurer), Harriet Sleight (Club Captain), Mark Whitby & Becky Penty (Club Coach), Sophie Cole (Safeguarding), Jess Harvie (PECO Captain), Elliot Cole (Social), Simon Middleton (Website). Vacancies will be advertised w/c 11th Dec.
We are looking into the costs of setting up a number of yorkpostalharriers.com email addresses to make it easier to contact respective committee members. This will allow us to streamline the ways in which we contact you and reduce the number of Whatsapp messages, Facebook posts and emails.
Bill will be emailing details out soon regarding our club place in the London Marathon and requesting applications for the 1 place. His email will include details of the eligibility criteria.
Eligibility criteria for the London Marathon place will be an agenda item at our next AGM on 10th April 2024.
We will hold a separate event to celebrate our annual club awards and the proposed timing for this will be in early Sept.
We are also investigating the potential for holding a club championship each year in addition to selected club trips to race events.
Finally, during the month of Jan we will hold new member events throughout the entire month, designed to give potential new members the chance to come down to a training session, meet existing members and help them decide we are the best club in York! We would like to conclude that by doing a parkun takeover at the end of the month where YPH takeover the range of volunteer roles.
That's all for now. As you can see, there is a lot of work in progress and much to do. Many thanks to my fellow committee members for giving their time to contribute to this and for everyone who attends our AGM's to share ideas. I hope this demonstrates that your ideas are listened to.
As we are now officially into December, on behalf of the committee I would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and take it easy on those icy paths!
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