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SPARC Sector Update July 2007
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09/04/2007 7:43 PM
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As a follow-up to the sector conference in May and in keeping with SPARC’s desire to keep our partners in the sector informed and up-to-date regarding SPARC’s business focus and priorities for the 2007/08 financial year, we are planning a series of presentations in August. We’d like to take this opportunity to invite you and any members of your senior management team that you would like to be present to attend. We have scheduled presentations throughout the country that will be fronted by Nick Hill, Peter Miskimmin, General Manager – Sector Development, and Sue Ruston, General Manager – Research Policy & Planning. Relationship Managers will also be attending. In addition to detailing SPARC’s current and future direction, this meeting will also provide the opportunity for you to comment, ask questions and raise any issues or concerns affecting your organisation specifically, or the sector, in general. I hope you and any appropriate members of your senior staff will be able to make the time to attend this presentation. In either case, I’d appreciate it if you could RSVP to Nicola Sutherland at SPARC by Monday 23 July. Nicola may be reached on (04) 498-2955 or alternatively by email at nicola.sutherland@sparc.org.nz. We look forward to seeing you in August.
As you are probably aware, the Government has imposed restrictions on travel to New Zealand by some Fijians. All sports people who are representing Fiji or Fiji national or club teams at all levels will be prevented from entering New Zealand for the purposes of sport unless they have obtained an exemption to the ban and a valid visa. It is possible to obtain exemptions to the ban in limited circumstances. Where New Zealand is hosting a regional or international tournament that obliges New Zealand to accept participants from Fiji, Fijian sports people may be exempted from the ban. They will also need to meet all the regular immigration requirements before they will be granted a visa. All requests for exemptions will be assessed by Ministers on a case-by-case basis. If you are aware of an upcoming event where Fijian sports people are likely to travel to (or transit through) New Zealand, you should advise the Fijian sports people to apply to the Suva Office of Immigration New Zealand for visas at least one month before the intended date of travel. You should also alert SPARC or the Minister’s Office about upcoming events involving Fijian sports people at the earliest opportunity. PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT GRANTS The Performance Enhancement Grants (PEGs) programme provides financial support to national sporting organisations (NSOs) to enable their results-capable athletes to dedicate time to training and competing in order to maximise their sporting potential. The 2007 PEGs criteria and nomination forms can be downloaded from http://www.sparc.org.nz/elite-sport/athletes/performance-enhancement-grants. The next nomination closing date is 5.00pm, Tuesday 31 July 2007; please forward completed nominations to jo.holmes@sparc.org.nz. Each year SPARC’s high performance unit, The New Zealand Academy of Sport (NZAS) conducts a survey with a commitment to obtaining information to continue to understand and improve the quality and impact of the NZAS Support Services that are available to Athletes and Coaches. The survey went live on Monday the 25th June to all Carded Athletes and Coaches of the NZAS Network. At present there has been only a 15% return rate which is not adequate to obtain information that will be useful and SPARC ideally require all Carded Coaches and Athletes to take part. The results of this survey are used to: - A) Identify strengths and areas for improvement with respect to services delivered via the NZAS Regional Operations B) Identify quality and impact of the services delivered by the NZAS Regional Operations. C) Assist in the NZAS Regional Operation short- and long-term planning process The survey takes approximately 5 minutes to complete and you are asked to encourage your athletes and coaches to take part. Without this information SPARC are unable to develop services to better improve the NZAS Network and better meet the needs of SPARC’s Carded recipients. SPORTS DISPUTES TRIBUNAL – IMPORTANT CHANGES There are important changes to the functions of the Sports Dispute Tribunal as a result of legislative changes introduced by the Sports Anti-Doping Act 2006. For further details please see the attached document. COUNCIL TRAINING – EARLY “HEADS UP” The sector conference held in May identified a need for a greater understanding of local government planning processes, in particular the Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP). As a result of this SPARC has partnered with four councils and will be jointly bringing to the sector an opportunity to up skill the sector. More information will be forthcoming in the near future but in order for you to book time in your schedule here is an indicative timetable. Wellington – 3 September Dunedin – 12 September Auckland – 24 September Christchurch – 11 September Places will be limited. For further information contact richard.lindsay@sparc.org.nz Is available on the SPARC website at the following link: - http://www.sparc.org.nz/sport/business-improvement/people-management . This Toolkit provides templates and guidelines for the whole range of your human resources function. The guidelines are in PDF but can be downloaded in “word” and customised to suit your needs. The templates include: individual employment agreements; contract for services; job description; performance development plan as well as a number of other documents and forms to help you with your people management processes. As always, you should be careful to make sure any templates are adapted and amended appropriately to suit the individual circumstances. If you are a “DoSL” (digital as a second language) and would also like a hard copy of the People Management Toolkit, please email Gretchen Young (Senior Advisor, Human Resources) on gretchen.young@sparc.org.nz and she will put one in the post for you. Club Kit went live on SPARC’s website on 2 July. Club Kit is an on line resource for clubs and volunteers. It’s been designed to support volunteers to successfully manage their sports clubs. Active promotion is expected to follow in a few weeks. Club Kit is based on the Club House framework, from Western Australia. SPARC have incorporated local resources and information, such as health & safety and tax has been modified to comply with NZ laws. Club Kit’s content also includes position descriptions for volunteers, marketing, media and events management along with governance and business planning resources. Links to other useful web sites have been provided were appropriate. SPARC are keen to encourage partners to provide any resources they may have already developed that can be assessed for best practise and then share them through this tool. Club Kit is available to assist partners to further develop and support club and volunteer capability. If you have any questions please contact - Gillian Peacock, Project Manager - Volunteers & Officials at gillian.peacock@sparc.org.nz NO EXCEPTIONS LEADERSHIP PROJECT SPARC welcomes the eight sports that have come on board with the No Exceptions leadership project as at 30 June this year. Athletics, Basketball, Bowls, GymSports, Equestrian, Rowing, Swimming and Table Tennis have all signed off on a commitment to integrating No Exceptions into their strategic and operational planning. That means a commitment to ensuring that, over time, the facilities and programmes offered by these sports will be accessible to disabled participants – from participation right through to high performance. The process of developing policy direction and planning templates will be coordinated through the Halberg Trust, in conjunction with other key SPARC partners in the sector, principally Paralympics New Zealand and Special Olympics New Zealand. SPARC is looking to involve further NSOs over the next few years, and is keen to add NROs to the team of No Exceptions leadership organisations. For more information or to register interest, contact mike.gourley@sparc.org.nz SPARC will again be running a Push Play Nation campaign over a 7 week period. The campaign will begin on 16 September and finish on Push Play Day, 2 November. This national campaign aims to encourage New Zealanders to be active and establish long-term physical activity routines. Media for Push Play Nation will include TV ads, radio, bus backs, press, internet and distribution of a direct mail to 1.2million households. The SPARC website will feature prominently in the campaign. If you have events/activities happening during the period of Push Play Nation or following the campaign and have information on your own website that you would like a link to from the SPARC website, please email the link along with a brief description of the event to jo.cheatley@sparc.org.nz by 25 July 2007. If you would like further information on Push Play Nation please contact Jo Cheatley on 04 496 3979 or jo.cheatley@sparc.org.nz There are a number of places still available on the following 2007 SPARC run courses: – Organisation Risk Management - Auckland - November 15th Health and Safety - Wellington - October 16th – for all staff Leading Change - Wellington - November 1st Core Governance 101 (Intro to Sport Governance) - Auckland - August 28th – For Board members Please contact kirsten.mcleod@sparc.org.nz to enrol or for more details EVENTS PROMOTIONS - NZLive.comNZLive.com is a new state of the art, free events listing site put together by a team at Ministry of Culture and Heritage. The site will promote sports and recreation events and activities to both local and international audiences. NSOs are encouraged to list events with them. The site links to ticketing agencies and includes background information on events. As well as our broad coverage of all things cultural, services such as emailing events information to friends and adding events details to personal online calendars are attracting visitors to the website. The site targets audiences right around the country. Organisations have begun reporting that visitors at their events have heard about them through NZLive.com. Several other events and travel guides are taking feeds of events from NZLive.com, which means that getting your events on NZLive.com will get your events on other websites too. Take advantage of this free promotion. Contact them at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage by emailing info@nzlive.com. GOVERNANCE EVALUATION SYSTEM – NEW MULTI YEAR DATA CAPABILITY SPARC are pleased to advise that the system is now able to produce multi-year reports. The Governance Evaluation System, launched in July 2006, is a web-based tool to assist in the evaluation and development of your governing body. The user-friendly system provides comprehensive, yet clear and simple feedback to encourage the continuous improvement of boards within the sport and recreation sector. The three modules provide feedback on the board as a whole, individual directors and the chairperson. With the new functionality up to three years of data can be selected and an easy to read report produced for each module. For registered users of the Governance Evaluation System information on how to use the multi-year functionality is provided on the introduction screen. If you are not a current user and want further information on the Governance Evaluation System and the multi-year functionality, please contact Kirsten at kirsten.mcleod@sparc.org.nz DONATIONS TO CHARITABLE ORGANISATIONS As part of this year’s budget, changes have been made to the taxation of donations to Charitable Organisations. The changes, to take effect from 1 April 2008, will only affect those organisations in the sport and recreation sector that have charitable status. In short the effect of the changes is that individuals, companies (including unlisted closely held companies) and Mâori authorities will receive greater tax relief for donations they make to charitable organisations. More specifically, the existing tax rebate thresholds for individuals, companies and Mâori organisations are to be removed, with tax rebates from donations only limited by the net income amount. The existing thresholds for tax rebates for donations are $1,890 for individuals and 5% for companies. The hope is that charities will benefit from extra funding arising from greater donation amounts being received due to the amended taxation rules. In order for donors to be eligible for these rebates or tax deductions, the charitable organisation must have donee status. Sport and recreation organisations generally do not fit within this definition, though there are some exceptions where the funds are applied for “charitable, benevolent, philanthropic or cultural purposes in New Zealand". Some sports and recreation organisations have trusts set up specifically for charitable purposes; in this case the changes in taxation of donations may apply. If you are unsure of your organisation’s donee status, contact Inland Revenue. VOLUNTEERS – THE HEART OF SPORT This week will see the release of a TV advert which recognises the work that sport volunteers do. The advert features real volunteers and focuses on the roles they play supporting sport. The advert also features the Don McGlashan song Pulled Along by Love. SPARC is the crown entity responsible for promoting, encouraging and supporting sport and physical recreation in New Zealand. For more details, visit www.sparc.org.nz |
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