The membership year for everyone ends on 30 September, so all existing memberships fall due for renewal together. Each club will therefore receive the renewal pack from ArcheryGB during early July each year – this is intended to allow sufficient time to complete the process, collect payment from your members and post it back, bearing in mind that this is the height of the tournament and holiday season, so members are likely to be absent a fair bit.
The target date for completion of the clubs’ part of the annual renewal process is the end of August. This allows ArcheryGB a month to complete their end of the process, if your members are to receive their membership cards before the new membership year starts.
Remember that the sooner you return the paperwork, the sooner your members are likely to receive their membership cards; if you miss the target date, it is very unlikely that your members will receive their new membership cards for the start of the new year.
The renewal pack consists of a covering letter, instructions and four forms:
- Annual Return
- Payment Summary and Membership Update
- Disclosure
- ArcheryGB Subscription Fee Receipts
We suggest that to prepare for completing this annual exercise, it is useful to take a copy of your club membership list, then delete:
- Club social members (because they do not require affiliation);
- Associate members (because they affiliate through another club);
- Direct members of ArcheryGB, SCAS and KAA.
Then compare the remainder of your membership list with the “Annual Return”, but remember that some of your members might not be on the “Annual Return” because they are:
- Transferring to your club: (i.e. they joined your club from another during the past year, but their ‘official’ club, county and/or region could not be changed until now) – add them to the “Payment Summary and Membership Update” form, as described in the ArcheryGB instructions.
- Recent new members of your club: (i.e. those who have joined your club as a new member since (or not long before) the “Annual Return” was generated) – add them to the “Payment Summary and Membership Update” form, as described below.
If there is anyone on the “Annual Return” who is not a member of your club, then draw a line through that entry – there is no need to query this with the ArcheryGB Membership Officer, as this will be queried by the club that has lost this member and there is little value in doubling the number of queries they need to deal with.
Now follow the guidance notes provided by ArcheryGB, but with one important exception relating to county and region fees – because of a change in the way SCAS will collect its membership fees in the future, clubs must not send fees directly to SCAS under any circumstances – please refer to the revised process for payment of membership fees.
Important note: ArcheryGB will not recognise a club if it has fewer than 3 members. If the total number of members remaining on the “Annual Return” plus any on accompanying “Payment Summary and Membership Update” forms drops below this number, the forms will be rejected and members asked to affiliate through an alternative club.
Recent New Members
One area that the ArcheryGB guidance notes don’t make clear is how to deal with membership renewals for members who join a club late in the membership year.
The “Annual Return” is generated in early July, so it can’t include members who were not included in the membership database at that time. Some might have been left out because of errors, but it will mostly be new members who join your club from July to September and possibly some people who joined before that, but whose applications had not yet made it through the system.
Obviously, anyone missed off because of an error should be sorted out with the ArcheryGB Membership Officer first, but if you have any recent new members who are not included in the “Annual Return”, just add them to the “Payment Summary and Membership Update”. If they have had their membership card just recently, then include the membership number on the form, otherwise fill in the full information the same as on their original membership application – the membership database has a deduplication system that will recognise the member and should ensure that their renewal is processed correctly.
Remember also that if anyone else joins your club before the end of September, you will also have to fill in a “Payment Summary and Membership Update” for the remainder of the current year and another for their renewal for the following year.