If you are thinking of starting your own Waka Ama Club, this section will give you the initial tools. Getting started is easy but you do need to think about the best way to get everything in place and the best people to help you do this!
1. Establishing a Committee
To ensure your clubs sustainability, a management committee must be established. This will include a president or chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer who are formed with the intention of making decisions about issues or taking action on tasks. A club's main committee will be the management team.
- President/chairperson
- Secretary
- Treasurer
- Volunteer coordinator
One of our goals at Waka Ama NZ has been to assist Clubs and Regions to align their constitutions to ours, to assist clubs who may be in need of updating their constitution thereby meeting today's legal standards/requirements and to assist those who may be forming new clubs by developing a Club Constitution template to aid them in this process.
The Waka Ama New Zealand Club Constitution Template provides clubs with all the detail they require while also allowing for some flexibility in certain areas (text written in blue) so that clubs can express their unique identities. It is important to remember that this document It is not a prescription, it is a template, so clubs may make any changes they wish. However, we would advise that this document has been legally reviewed and any significant changes, other than the flexible areas in blue, should be reviewed by a lawyer to ensure the document remains sound.
Waka Ama New Zealand are happy to assist you with your process to update, amend or adopt a new club constitution. Please contact admin@wakaama.co.nz if you have any questions and require any advice.
See the template attached.
Sport NZ also has some great tips and a sample constitution you can download here, the societies office also has a sample set of rules here
3. Becoming an Incorporated Society/Trust
- An application form (signed by 15 members, with signatures witnessed by someone who has not signed the application form as a member)
- A copy of the society’s rules certified by an officer or solicitor of the society
- The filing fee - NZ$102.22.
4. Contact your Regional Waka Ama Representatives
Once you have completed the above steps, your club will need to affiliate to the region first - contact details for each region can be found here. Each region is different and there is an affiliation fee associated with this process.
5. Contact Waka Ama NZ
Once your regional representative confirms your affiliation the next step is to contact Waka Ama NZ (if you are not in contact with us already)
6. LIVE on the Waka Ama NZ Website
Once all these steps are completed your details will be loaded on to the Waka Ama NZ Website. Your club will be issued with a Waka Ama NZ member log in, password and other relevant information.
