Resources for Club Committees, Associations and Peak Bodies

Free eLearning covering harassment and discrimination, member protection information officer duties, complaint handling, inclusive coaching, creating an LGBTI+ inclusive club, and safeguarding children and young people in sport. A set of mini-courses runs thirty to forty-five minutes, short enough to assign to a whole committee or coaching group in one sitting. No membership or club affiliation is required and nothing is paid.

The practical use is as a training record rather than as reading: assign the member protection course to whoever holds that role, complaint handling to the committee, and the safeguarding induction to every coach and volunteer, then keep completion evidence alongside working with children check records. One housekeeping note — the standalone child protection course was withdrawn on 31 March 2024, so any induction pack still linking to it needs updating. The site carries no dates, so module currency cannot be checked.

The National Integrity Framework covers five policies — safeguarding children and young people, member protection, improper use of drugs and medicine, competition manipulation and sport gambling, and complaints, disputes and discipline — and more than eighty national sporting organisations have adopted it. Full adoption is limited to recognised national bodies, so a community club normally inherits the obligation through affiliation rather than signing up itself. Establishing which policies your national body has adopted is therefore the first step, because those flow down and bind the club and its members.

What a club needs regardless: an accessible safeguarding policy stating prohibited conduct and how to raise a concern, a member protection policy with a fair complaints process and a review cycle, a named welfare officer or member protection information officer, and working with children checks recorded for every child-related role. SIA Edge offers more than twenty-five free courses. The page is undated and does not explain how the obligation reaches an unaffiliated club.

Two obligations introduced on 1 July 2024 catch committees out. Every association must have a grievance procedure allowing a member to appoint a representative, giving each side a chance to be heard, and providing unbiased mediation and decision-makers — an older procedure falling short of that is invalid, and adopting the model rules version is the fastest fix. And remuneration and benefits paid to committee members, senior staff and their relatives must be disclosed at every AGM, including a nil amount, even for associations exempt from lodging financial reports.

The reporting levels turn on current assets or revenue: large above $1 million assets or $500,000 revenue, medium from $300,000 or $150,000, small below both. AGM within six months of year end, annual return within one month of the AGM. The auditor or verifier cannot be a committee member, employee, business partner or their spouse. The obligations are spread across four sub-pages with different update dates.

Three tiers apply from 1 July 2024: under $500,000 revenue is Tier 1, $500,000 to $3 million is Tier 2, above $3 million is Tier 3. Tier 1 needs no external review unless the rules require one or members vote for it. Tier 2 requires an independent accountant's review. Tier 3 requires a full audit. Crossing the $500,000 line therefore adds a cost the budget has to absorb, which is worth forecasting before year end rather than discovering after it.

The sequence is fixed: statements prepared, two committee members sign a certificate that they give a true and fair view, AGM within five months of year end, annual statement lodged in myCAV within one month of the AGM. Lodgement fees for 2026-27 run $51.80, $103.60 and $207.20 by tier. The secretary must live in Australia and a vacancy must be filled within fourteen days. The page states no late fees or penalties.

The Privacy Act reaches not-for-profits turning over more than $3 million, and most clubs assume that lets them out. Two things complicate it. Turnover counts all income from all sources — membership fees, grants, sponsorship, canteen and bar takings, event income — not just subscriptions. And four exceptions catch a club at any size: holding an Australian Government contract or subcontract, providing a health service even incidentally, trading personal information for a benefit, or being related to a covered body corporate.

The bigger development sits on a separate page: a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy commenced 10 June 2025 and expressly reaches entities the Act does not cover, with damages, injunctions or an ordered apology available through the courts. So the turnover exemption is not the shield committees think it is. Note this page has not been refreshed since October 2024 and mentions neither the tort nor the December 2026 automated decision-making disclosure.

Worth reading for what is not there. Across four rounds Active Clubs funded 7,032 organisations with more than $15.8 million, and the page still hosts the Round 4 recipient table. But it carries no round status, no dates, no dollar figures and no eligibility criteria, has not been updated since June 2025, and the Round 4 guidelines PDF now returns a 404 rather than an archive.

More telling, the 2026-27 Queensland budget service delivery statements for the department make no mention of Active Clubs at all — the sport programs named are Play On! Sports Vouchers, Games On! and the Racing Infrastructure Fund. Re-checked September 2026 with no change. A committee cannot prepare a compliant application today. The practical step is to register interest with a regional Sport and Recreation office and pursue the Active Industry Project Fund or Active Women and Girls instead. Queensland departmental pages have been moving under a restructured site, so if this link stops resolving, search the department's site for the program name before assuming it has been discontinued.

Grants of $1,000 to $10,000 from an $815,000 pool, limited to one application per organisation, with costs above the ceiling met by the club from other sources. Scope is deliberately equipment-focused: playing and training gear, coaching and officiating equipment, safety and protective equipment, uniforms, participation-related IT equipment, watercraft and venue maintenance equipment. The 2025-26 round opened 11 February 2026, making this a summer rather than mid-year round.

The framing is broad across codes — archery, surfing, pony club, karting, sailing and croquet clubs were all funded in the prior round, which distributed close to a million dollars across 162 projects. The current round is closed. Note the live page publishes no dates, no incorporation or insurance requirement and no ineligible list; those sit only in a guidelines PDF that has to be downloaded manually.

Unusually, this is not a sliding scale: clubs under 100 members receive $1,500 and clubs at 100 or more receive $3,000, with no partial awards. Associate, social and life memberships all count toward the total. Round 55 paid just over $1.4 million across 558 clubs, half of them outside inner metropolitan Adelaide. Applicants must be incorporated under the SA Act, hold at least twenty members, and have operated twelve months.

Eligible spending covers equipment, uniforms, professional development, first aid and defibrillators, venue maintenance equipment, promotion and participation hardship subsidies. Excluded: operating expenses, wages, furniture, subscriptions, travel, prizes and capital works. Round 56 opened 28 August 2026 and closes at midday on Tuesday 14 October 2026, with a pool of $1,448,000. Recreational fishing organisations are named as eligible alongside sporting clubs, which is unusual — most state sport programs restrict eligibility to affiliated sport.

Grants of $2,000 to $20,000 from a $4.65 million pool, with $50,000 quarantined to each of the 93 NSW electorates — and assessed in the electorate containing the project address rather than the club's postal address, which changes who you are competing against. The round opened 27 July 2026 and closed at 1pm on Monday 24 August. Outcomes are due December 2026 and funded projects must be complete by June 2028.

Preparation is heavier than most state programs: incorporation, written confirmation of State Sporting Organisation affiliation, a declaration of at least $5 million public liability cover, quotes no older than six months, a milestone plan, and development approval evidence for anything built. Annual subscriptions, operating costs, office equipment, insurance and grant-writing costs are all excluded. Worth reading now to assemble the evidence pack before the next round — the affiliation letter and the liability declaration are the two items clubs most often cannot produce at short notice.

The national participation dataset, most recently updated 30 April 2026 with calendar year 2025 results. It covers more than 600 activities, breaks down by state and territory, and publishes activity-level reports for twenty-six sports including several club-based codes. A dedicated report covers non-playing roles and volunteering, which is the harder number for a club to find anywhere else.

The trap is comparability. AusPlay moved from phone to online collection in July 2023, doubling the sample from 20,000 to 40,000 and setting a new baseline — the Sports Commission states directly that current figures cannot be compared with 2015 to 2023 data. Any board paper or funding submission showing a trend line across that break is wrong. Note also that no headline figures appear on the page itself; every number sits behind a download or a Power BI portal.

Round 1 of 2026-27 opened 10 July and closed at 4pm on 26 August 2026, with outcomes due in October. Round 2 opens 18 February 2027 and closes 1 April 2027. Five categories: on-field uniforms or equipment to $1,000, volunteers and officials to $5,000, access and events to $2,500 for a single session or $5,000 for a series, travel to $750, and governance and engagement to $1,500.

Two traps sink applications. Quotes must be dated 1 June 2026 or later and still unpaid at the time of applying — retrospective or already-paid invoices are rejected outright. And a club funded in categories one, two, three or five during 2025-26 cannot reapply in those categories, leaving only the $750 travel stream. Applicants must be incorporated with an ABN; unincorporated clubs and schools are ineligible. No total pool or co-contribution requirement is stated, so competitiveness cannot be gauged.

The framing is the useful part: this treats recruiting into an unprepared club as the main failure mode. Before advertising a single vacancy it wants written position descriptions, a selection and screening process, an induction procedure and confirmed day-to-day support already in place, plus a named volunteer coordinator — a role it estimates at a few hours a week or folded into an existing position.

It also reframes retention around motivation rather than reward: training for people building skills, written references for people building a career, recognition matched to the individual. Nomination windows for the Premier's Volunteer Recognition Program and the Sport NSW Community Sports Awards are worth diarising, and downloadable recruitment posters are provided. It is guidance and signposting only — screening obligations are outsourced to Play by the Rules rather than spelled out.

The clearest explanation available of what club insurance actually requires and covers. No state or territory associations incorporation Act generally compels an association to insure its office holders. Queensland is the exception for public liability where the association owns, leases or holds land on trust, and Victoria imposes a statutory indemnity for office holders acting in good faith — capped by the association's assets, which is the practical argument for separate cover.

Two corrections for most committees. Workers compensation does not extend to volunteers and public liability policies commonly exclude volunteer injury outright, so volunteer personal accident cover has to be bought separately. And a signed parental consent or waiver does not discharge a duty of care to a child; it evidences acknowledgement of risk, nothing more. Generic to all community organisations, so nothing specific to on-range, on-road or on-water activity.

The regulator's own summary of what a New South Wales committee must do. At least three members, all over eighteen, with three resident in Australia. The AGM must be held within six months of financial year end, and the annual summary lodged within one month of that AGM and no later than seven months after year end. Public officer vacancies filled within twenty-eight days, constitution changes registered within twenty-eight days of the resolution.

Two provisions belong on a committee checklist. A departing committee member must hand over all association documents within fourteen days, which is where clubs usually lose institutional memory. And the reporting tier turns on revenue above $500,000 or current assets above $1 million, so growth quietly changes the obligation. New South Wales only.

Eleven Child Safe Standards apply to every Victorian organisation delivering services to children, as a legal obligation under the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act rather than as guidance. Working with children checks have been mandatory since 2006 for paid staff and volunteers in direct contact with under-eighteens — which in a club means parent helpers too, not just coaches.

The provision committees most often do not know about is the Reportable Conduct Scheme. The head of the organisation must notify the Commission for Children and Young People within three business days of becoming aware of an allegation across five defined categories, and failing to notify is an offence. Anything potentially criminal goes to police separately. The standards also require documented policies, a child-friendly complaints route and annual review. Victoria only — other states screen differently.