Club Affiliation

Join the network of over 80 clubs across Scotland. 

What are the benefits of affiliation?

 

  • Civil Liability Insurance for recognised club activities
  • Employers liability insurance
  • Club featured on Club Finder on SCA Website and GoPaddling.info
  • Scottish Paddler, official magazine of SCA every quarter
  • Advice and help with paddling related queries
  • Discipline specific advice from volunteers serving on SCA Committees
  • Subsidised courses (e.g. safety and leadership)
  • Free training (e.g. equality, disability, data protection)
  • Club Development Webinars and courses
  • Club Volunteer Conference 
  • Eligible to organise events (with permission) sanctioned by SCA
  • Help and advice on Child Protection and the processing of the relevant forms
  • Safeguarding advice, case support and PVGs
  • Case studies 
  • Analytics & Reports 
  • Access to data on club members 

 

How to Affiliate to the SCA

Affiliation can now be carried out online via JustGo.

If you do not yet have Club Admin permissions enabled, please get in touch by emailing  hello@canoescotland.org 

Requirements of Affiliation

  • 1. People

    a. Maintain an up to date membership list in JustGo. The exception , adding new members by the time of their 7th club session.  

    b. Provide contact details for Club Secretary and, if the club has any under 18s a Safeguarding Officer.


    Clubs are required to collect Name, email, address, gender, DOB for all members/club associates. 

  • 2. Governance

    (template constitutions and policies are all available here)

    • Constitution - A constitution, or other governing document, meeting the SCA’s minimum requirements, see here. 
    • Safeguarding - Adopt the SCA Safeguarding Policy or have a similar policy in place  (where the club contains any under 18 members). Have a Recruitment of Ex-Offenders Policy, Secure Handling of Disclosure Information Policy and Making Referrals to Disclosure Scotland Policy. 
    • PVG - Have access to PVG checks either through SCA or another organisation and comply with PVG scheme requirements (where the club contains any under 18 members)
    • Data protection  - Adopt the SCA Data Protection Policy or have a similar policy in place. For access to the shared folder of data protection advice, please contact us. 

  • 3. Safety

    a. Event Safety - clubs organising events to non-club members are required to comply with the British Canoeing Event Safety requirements including appointing an Event Safety Officer (if the club has any events for non club members).

    b. In addition, we recommend clubs consider implementing the following documents. Guidance and templates are available on this page. 

    i. Standard Operating Procedures

    ii. Health and Safety Policy 

    iii. Risk Assessment(s)

  • 4. Declaration

    Club secretaries will be required to accept these declarations when renewing the club affiliation. This will be a single tick box online. Please ensure the Club Secretary has the authority to agree to them at time of affiliation/renewal. 

     

    Only when the above requirements have been met and the club has received formal confirmation via the SCA office is affiliation complete. Affiliation is valid for 12 months. 


    We are very mindful that increasing the number and degree of things required to affiliate to the SCA places even more of a burden on the volunteers running the clubs. We are here to help - whether it be through a phone call, a meeting or sharing templates or examples of things from other clubs (with their permission). So please do get in touch with any of the SCA staff or the volunteer Regional Officers and let us know how we can assist you. Contact details are available here.


    Copy of Club Declaration

More information and guidance for clubs, including Marketing, Club Case Studies and SCA Policies is also available here .  



Club Constitution
In order to affiliate / re-affiliate to SCA, clubs constitutions (or other equivalent governing document) are required to meet the following criteria. The requirements below are based on generic sportscotland criteria required by all organisations receiving any funding e.g. Awards for All.

A template constitution is available from sportscotland help for clubs.

The document must: 
  1. State the name of the club
  2. Be formally adopted by the club (e.g. evidence of an Annual General Meeting when the document was adopted). 
  3. State the objectives or aims of the club; with aims aligning to those of the SCA
  4. State that the club will be affiliated to SCA
  5. Explain the management – who is on the committee, what they do, how the club will manage matters arising. Clubs with under 18s must explicitly list Safeguarding Officer as a committee role. 
  6. Annual General Meeting and Extraordinary General Meeting - date by which AGM dates place each year, number of members required to attend, define notice period
  7. Dissolution – In the event that the club will cease to exist detail how the club will spend/transfer its remaining funds and how it should be dissolved
  8. Explain the club is not for profit distributing / Non Commercial and genuinely not-for-profit and therefore no payment to Directors, Committee members etc
  9. Include an open to all clause - updated to meet Equality Act 2010
  10. Be gender neutral (e.g. refer to “Chair” not “Chairman”)
  11. Have equal representation for male and female specific posts (if they exist) on committee (e.g. if there is a male captain there must also be a female captain)
  12. Outline a disciplinary procedure including a right of appeal 
  13. Membership: 
  14. Define membership categories and voting rights
  15. Have an appeal procedure for rejected membership applications and expelled member
  16. No separate male and female memberships
  17. No Proposer and Seconder required in order to be a member
  18. No probationary period for membership
Club Safety
We recommend clubs consider implementing the following documents:
  • Standard Operating Procedures
  • Health and Safety Policy 
  • Risk Assessment(s)
Club Standard Operating Procedures
This is a simple description of how the club operates on a day to day basis. It should cover who is responsible for carrying out certain tasks within the club. You’ll find the Club Standard Operating Procedure Template download a useful guide to which areas need to be covered on your procedures. Not all may be applicable to your club but equally there may be other procedures you observe which could be entered. It can be used as guidance or as a template for your written procedures.

Please see the links below for more information.

Club Affiliation Fees
Club Size from 1/12/24 from 1/12/25
Clubs with up to 20 members who are not individual SCA members £130 £140
Clubs with up to 21-40 members who are not individual SCA members £210 £225
Clubs with between 41 and 100 members who are not individual SCA members £280 £295
Clubs with between 101 and 200 members who are not individual SCA members £455 £480
Clubs with more than 200 members who are not individual SCA members £545 £575
Individual SCA members are those who pay an annual membership fee to the SCA for Full, Junior, Recreational or Family membership
JustGo - Managing club membership, events and payments online

Now available to SCA Affiliated Clubs is an extension to the Just Go platform for clubs to process the clubs own memberships, event bookings and payments. We know many clubs have already started utilising other online systems and payment methods whilst some are still using more manual methods but seeking other solutions. 


A primary benefit is single source data - all the data is in one place with full GDPR compliance. You have no need to enter data in another system. Members log in to one system to manage all their information for the club and SCA. Payments are sent directly to the club's own bank account.


JustGo for Clubs is a competitively priced subscription based service with a small monthly fee and a transaction fee for credit / debit card payments. Cheques are recorded free. 


There are many benefits to integrating the clubs processing with the existing SCA Just Go system. 


For more information contact hello@canoescotland.org or visit the Club section in Just Go. 


Defining Club Activities


Club Associate Members are covered for third party liability insurance for any paddling activity within their club that has had due diligence/risk assessment carried out by the relevant and accountable club representative(s) and is organised and delivered by club members (or others appointed by the committee) for club members and promoted on the official club calendar, website, social media or noticeboard”


“Club activities can also include inter-club activities (involving no more than 4 clubs) providing all clubs involved recognise it as part of their official club activities (see above definition). In this case one club (host club) is responsible for risk assessment, management of the activity and sharing this information with the other clubs who take part.