Mar 6, 2013
1963 – WHAT A YEAR
JUNE … JFK COMES TO IRELAND
NOVEMBER … THE BEATLES COME TO IRELAND
DECEMBER… TENPIN BOWLING COMES TO IRELAND
To celebrate its 50th year in Ireland the sport of Tenpin Bowling together with the top Bowling Centres throughout the country have put together an exciting year long programme designed to bring the game to a new generation. March 11th thro to 15th has been designated as National Tenpin Bowling Week when ALL schools have the opportunity to avail of FREE bowling for their
students.
The process could not be any simpler. A phone call to any participating centre and the booking is complete in seconds. Information packs have been sent to all schools in the country and as capacity is limited it will surely be a case of the early bird catching the worm. Already in excess of 12,000 students have signed up. Each centre will offer students the opportunity to win valuable prizes on the day making this initiative something to be bowled over by.
Watch out for more exciting announcements from Tenpin Bowling throughout the coming year.
1963… 50 years ago to-day Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.
2013 …“Bowling for All” wants you to play our game.
Full details on www.bowlingforall.ie
Mar 6, 2013
About the Seminar
New data will be presented by Sinéad
Kelleher of 2into3 on the subject of
fundraising, including:
• Trends in fundraised income across
the not-for-profit sector in Ireland
• The cost of fundraising in Ireland
This report is based on the analysis of
900+ accounts from organisations in the
not-for-profit sector in Ireland.
Mar 6, 2013
Deaf Village Ireland (DVI), an all-inclusive state-of-the-art community facility officially opened its doors on Ratoath Road, Cabra on Monday. DVI aims to facilitate and support members of the Deaf community nationally to encourage inclusivity and the local community and communication between the two groups. This is aided by the bi-lingual approach taken, whereby Irish Sign Language (ISL) and spoken English are the two primary languages present and both are used constantly. At 11.30, Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Mr Leo Varadkar officiated the opening by cutting the ceremonial ribbon and releasing doves alongside manager Sylvia Nolan.
The introduction of this facility to the community so far has, and will continue to have a huge impact by providing sporting, social, religious, heritage, educational, community and cultural services and amenities for Deaf, Hard of Hearing and hearing people alike. Services are available for Deaf and Hard of Hearing youths and senior members.
The Launch itself lasted from 10am until 10pm with multiple events taking place. The morning saw a water-polo exhibition between Deaf school boys & senior take place in the Inspire Fitness Centre within the premises. Following Minister Varadkar’s opening, there where speeches by a number of people, including Manager Sylvia Nolan, Caroline McGrotty of the Vice Chairperson of DVI, Kevin Lynch, Chairperson of the Sportco before Fr. Gerard, Chaplain for NCDP gave a blessing of the official opening.
The afternoon saw presentations from a few of the Deaf organisations at the Cabragh hall, such as DSI, IDYA, Deafhear, DDA, SLIS, the Deaf Heritage Centre and Deaf Drama. This was followed by a 6-a-side football match on the DVI all-weather pitches, between local club the Bohemians and a team consisting of Deaf players. The Bohemians players wore ear plugs in order to experience what it is like to play sports Deaf. Both lunch and dinner were served to guests, as well as light refreshments throughout the day and at 8pm DVI hosted a Ceili that pulled in a large crowd, both Deaf and hearing.
For more information contact:
Lorelei Fox-Roberts
Communications and Fundraising Assistant,
Deaf Sports Ireland
communication@deafsportsireland.com (Email)
087 7900800 (Tel)
Feb 28, 2013
The Irish Sports Council and the National Sports Campus Development Authority are due to merge as part of the rationalisation of state bodies. Late last year the Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport had a consultation on the role and remit of the merged entity under the working title “Sport Ireland”. The Federation recently finalised its submission on Sport Ireland, a copy of which can be found here. In completing the submission the Federation sought input from its members and also took a detailed look at the role and remit of similar organisations overseas with Singapore in particular, providing a model from which we feel there is a lot Ireland can learn.
Feb 28, 2013
The Department of Justice & Equality is currently consulting on the implementation of the Charities Act, 2009 (the “Act”). The bringing into force of the legislation which was enacted in 2009 has been delayed due to the resources required to give effect to the legislation. The purpose of the consultation is therefore to examine how the Act might best to advance the aims of the Act given the changed budgetary circumstances.
Purpose of the Act
The purpose of the Act is to reform the law relating to charities in order to ensure greater accountability and to protect against the abuse of charitable status. The Act is also designed to enhance public trust and confidence in charities as well as enhance the transparency of the charitable sector.
Charities Regulatory Authority
The Act provides for the establishment of a new independent regulator for charities – the Charities Regulatory Authority (the “CRA”). The CRA will maintain a Register of Charities and will also have significant monitoring and investigatory powers. The Register which will include contact details and certain other information on charities will be publicly available. Charitable organisations registered with the CRA will be obliged to comply with certain reporting requirements dependent on their turnover including the production of accounts and annual activities reports.
Exclusion of Sport
Sport is excluded from the remit of the 2009 Act, by the cross reference in the definition of “excluded body” at section 2 of the 2009 Act to s.235 of the Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997 which defines an approved body for the purposes of that legislation as “any body of persons established for the sole purpose of promoting athletic or amateur games or sports.”
Charitable Purpose as defined by the Act
The 2009 Act sets out at Section 3(11) a number of specific purposes included in the definition of “purpose of the benefit to the community”. These include a number of purposes in which, sport has a significant role to play:
- The advancement of community welfare
- The promotion of civic responsibility or voluntary work
- The promotion of health, including the prevention or relief of sickness, disease or human suffering
- The promotion of religious or racial harmony and harmonious community relations
- The advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or sciences; and
- The integration of those who are disadvantaged, and the promotion of their full participation, in society
Other Countries
There are a number of countries that share Ireland’s Common Law background. Most of these countries have in recent years passed legislation regarding charities with all introducing charitable status for sport in some shape or form. These include:
- England & Wales – “advancement of amateur sport” – sport meaning sports or games which promote health by physical or mental skill or exertion – Charities Act (England & Wales), 2006
- Northern Ireland – “advancement of amateur sport” – sport meaning sports or games which promote health by physical or mental skill or exertion – Charities Act (Northern Ireland), 2008
- Scotland – “the advancement of public participation in sport” – sport meaning sport which involves physical skill and exertion – Charities & Trustee Investment, (Scotland) Act, 2005
- New Zealand – “the promotion of athletic sports” – Charities Act, 2005
- Singapore – “the advancement of sport, where sport promotes health through physical skill and exertion”
- USA – “fostering national or international amateur sports competition” – s501 Internal Revenue Code
Tax Relief on Donations
The Act makes specific provision that the designation of charitable status does not automatically qualify an organisation for the tax relief current available to such organisations on donations. In order to qualify for such relief organisations are required to go through an application with Revenue. It is not envisaged that this will change following the implementation of the Act.
Fundraising by Sports Clubs
Under the Act, charitable organisations will be prohibited from engaging in fundraising activities if they are not registered with the CRA. Sports clubs or organisations that engage in fundraising will be able to continue to fundraise without registering with the CRA as they do not qualify for charitable status However, there are likely to be issues as the public become accustomed to having access to information about charities that fundraise but find that such information in relation to sporting organisations is not so available.
It should be of interest to sport in this regard, that the Act and the regulation that comes with it is something the vast majority of the charitable sector actively lobbied for believing that it would serve to safeguard the trust the public currently have for the sector.
Moving forward for Sport….
The Federation in its Vision 2020 have outlined the belief that sport should have “charitable status” in part because of the recognition that comes with the designation that the activities of the organisation are of public benefit. The Federation is also of the view that sport is at a significant disadvantage to other parts of the not-for-profit sector such as arts and culture when it comes to accessing private sector and philanthropic funding as such organisations do qualify for charitable status whilst sport does not.
The Federation is already working with the Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport and the Irish Sports Council on the issue. We recently submitted a briefing paper a copy of which can be accessed here.
The Federation will look to consult further with members on this issue over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we would encourage all members to look at the consultation issued by the Department of Justice & Equality and to consider making a submission on an issue that is likely to have a significant impact on available resources to sport.
Feb 28, 2013
The Better Boards, Stronger Sport (BBSS) governance project meeting was hosted by Just Sport Ireland (JSI) and the Irish Sports Council (ISC) in Dublin on the 31st January and 1st February.
The BBSS project and ‘toolkit’ is a European Commission funded project, led by the UK Sport and Recreation Alliance, aimed at ‘promoting innovative approaches to strengthen the organisation of sport in Europe’ as part of the EU funding for Preparatory Action 2011 in the Field of Sport. The BBSS ‘toolkit’ which will be produced at the end of the project aims to help national governing bodies of sport improve their governance and will help sports organisations become more effective.
Dublin was the fourth (and penultimate) project meeting host with representatives from five different EU countries attending including the UK, Ireland, Poland, Estonia and Finland. The eight sporting bodies represented were; the UK Sport and Recreation Alliance, JSI, the ISC, the Polish Ministry of Sport and Tourism, the Estonian Olympic Committee the Finnish Sports Federation, European Women in Sport, European Athlete as Student as well as researchers from Birkbeck, University of London who are collating and editing the text.
Each country provided a number of governance case studies, from which ten shall be used, and Ireland provided detailed case studies from Cricket Ireland, Triathlon Ireland, Special Olympics Ireland and Paralympics Ireland. The purpose of the meeting was to review and edit the case study design, and for each country to present the tools for implementing each of the ten ‘features’ of good governance identified:
– Feature 1: Act in the best interest of the sport
– Feature 2: Define the role of the Board and evaluate their performance
– Feature 3: Establish a balanced competency based Board
– Feature 4: Set the vision and mission and provide leadership on the strategy
– Feature 5: Establish effective controls
– Feature 6: Act with transparency and be accountable to stakeholders
– Feature 7: Engage with sporting and non-sporting bodies
– Feature 8: Work as a team
– Feature 9: Focus on membership
– Feature 10: Promote good governance throughout the sport
JSI presented on Features 2 and 10; the different ‘role descriptions’ for board members and the importance of ‘succession planning’, whilst the ISC presented on Feature 9; ‘membership strategy’. The discussion highlighted the importance of the Chairman/CEO role for the effective running of a sporting organisation and it was felt more emphasis needed to be put around this relationship. It was felt also that as much importance should be placed on membership retention as membership growth and information about how to implement this will be included in the final ‘toolkit’.
The final group meeting shall take place in Helsinki on the 9th and 10th of May at which the completed ‘toolkit’ will be agreed for publishing. JSI and the ISC shall then publicise and make available the ‘toolkit’ to NGBs thereafter. Further information on the Better Boards, Stronger Sport project can be found on the UK Sport and Recreation Alliance’s website: http://www.sportandrecreation.org.uk/projects-programmes-and-initiatives/bbss
