Do you want to join the Club as a Discipline?
BBRD is a Club of, by and for enthusiasts. Over the years we have supported an incredibly wide range of martial arts and related cultural activities. We are always looking to help in ways we can to support people with a passion, and make available novel activities to the USQ and wider communities.
There are many benefits of coming under the Club’s banner. New activities often have to compete for participants and numbers in a crowded landscape. Start up costs with those small numbers can be prohibitive, once you add insurance, hall hire, advertising, uncertain income streams
So what does it take to start a new activity or discipline at the Club?
As a Club we always welcome the addition of classes by suitably qualified instructors. Our minimum requirements are:
Possession of current a Senior First Aid + CPR (or equivalent)
Blue Card (Working with children suitability) or equivalent
Authority to teach as recognised by a peak State/National/International body. This might be a minimum rank held, a formal letter from an organisation that you are a part of, external qualification (like NCAS), or equivalent. This can take to form of recognition by that body to run a “study group” under the supervision of a more senior instructor that is remotely located from where you are.
Options for being associated with BBRD
There are three ways that we might be able to support you.
Associate Member Discipline
This is the most informal of the arrangements that we might offer. As an associate member discipline, you effectively are running your own show. Insurance, branding, identity, class structures and hall hire are your responsibility. What we provide is a funnel to your classes should we get any enquiries from someone wanting to train in your art where we as an organisation do not formally have the capacity to run those classes ourselves. This may include subletting space from the Club, though we would have to organise a formal contract in such cases. In order to be an Associate Member Discipline, you would still need to demonstrate that your instructors met our minimum requirements.
Your local most senior instructor would be asked to join BBRD at a fee of $30 (general membership plus a discipline fee). You would not get a vote at an Executive level, but you would be encouraged to come along and promote your discipline at public events such as the Toowoomba Languages and Cultures Festival, Carnival of Flowers, and Harmony Day, and you would be asked for your input into various issues a the Club as they become relevant to your activities.
BBRD supported discipline
In this you would get the full privileges of a supported discipline, including a seat/vote on the Executive, resourcing and negotiation of training times. We would ask that all of your students become members of BBRD ($15 for a current USQ student or full time student of any educational institution; $20 for ordinary members; plus a $10 Discipline fee).
You would be responsible for organising/maintaining insurance for your activity, and need to provide evidence of this. Personal costs such as instructor training and personal membership of peak organisations are still the responsibility of the individual. However, we do cover dojo registration fees if there are any.
Class fees would be generated under the agreed Club structure, where a casual session is $10 and a monthly fee is $70/80 (concession/full). These get deposited into the central Club account. Students paying monthly are able to train in as many sessions as they want, in whichever disciplines they wish to train in, within the Club context.
If you do independent fund raising, those dollars get put into the Club account but specifically allocated to you to spend. You are also eligible to receive cross subsidised funding from the pool that is raised from general Club revenues. We will also help to create promotional material for your discipline and provide some subsidy towards promotional costs. And you get the benefit of people from other disciplines coming and giving a hand for your events.
You will also get our full support for engagement with the University community, including University Sport Div 1 support.
BBRD supported discipline with full insurance cover
In addition to all of the above benefits, if you require full insurance coverage for you in-class activities, you can decide to come under the full scope of the Club’s insurance by agreeing to have each of your class participants pay an insurance premium of $30 per person. The $30 is paid by BBRD members only once per year directly to the Club regardless of how many of the disciplines they train in that fall under this scheme (currently Jujutsu, Systema, Arnis, Kyudo, and Taiko). Our current level of PL/PI/Sportscover insurance is $20 million/$10million/$50,000, which complies with both University of Southern Queensland and Toowoomba Regional Council expectations for eligability to use their facilities.
So how do I make this happen?
In order to make your proposal to join the Club as a supported discipline, you will need to send an e-mail to the President at enquiries@bbrd.org.au, outlining:
The breadth and scope of classes you propose to run, including age focus (exclusively children, mostly children, mix of children and adult, mostly adults, exclusively adults)
The types of training you engage in (contact/non-contact, whether you train techniques that involve throws/sweeps/grappling/falls, weapons work especially what type of weapons and how they are used, your philosophy of teaching and how you explicitly account for diverse abilities and backgrounds)
What facility requirements you have for those classes (such as minimum safe area for training per student, mats, protective equipment and the storage of such)
A Risk Assessment and Management Plan for your training activities (no need for organisational risk at this stage)
A brief history of your discipline and your specific organisation, outlining its current affiliations with relevant State/National and/or International organisations
Certificate of current insurance of a minimum $20m Public Liability and $10m Professional Indemnity
A list of who will be authorised to teach at the facility, and the qualifications framework that provides them with the authorisation to teach (i.e. rank requirements, additional coaching qualifications, memberships of said external organisations)
An acknowledgement that you have read and understood the Instructor, Student and Training codes as posted on the Club’s website, and an in principle undertaking that you will uphold these.
Also included in this documentation should be copies of certificates for each authorised teacher that include:
Their Blue Card (or equivalent if in a profession such as teaching at school),
Senior First aid plus current CPR,
Their rank and teaching qualifications as laid out by the authorisation framework and copies of the certificates associated with their qualifications
The usual process is that we pass this documentation bundle to the current Executive, which includes the elected officials and the ex officio discipline coordinators/instructors for in principle approval of the inclusion of your activities within our existing training framework. We would then vote on whether to extend the offer of our space (or inclusion in the Club), and if passed, you would then be invited to an Executive meeting for a meet and greet. We then proceed with a one month trial. If you are subletting the space from us, we would ask for a one month deposit of the hire cost in advance by way of bond. If you were included in the Club structure, there would be no need for a bond payment. At the conclusion of the one month trail, we would either proceed on an ongoing basis with the rent for the space due in the Club’s bank account by the end of the calendar month, a report of your Class usage to the Treasurer, and a brief report of how your month went sent to the Secretary. If either the Club or yourself wished, without prejudice, to terminate the relationship in that first month, we would retain the full amount of the bond in lieu of needing to deposit an additional payment for the time used in the hall. If we were to terminate the arrangement in the future, we would again retain the full bond regardless of what stage of the month the termination took place.
Neither bond nor monthly payment would not be necessary if you decide to be a BBRD supported discipline, as the financials would be accounted for through the membership and training fees structure. If you were to convert from a sub-leasing associate discipline to a supported discipline, the bond payment we retain would then be earmarked for equipment and promotional costs specifically for your discipline.
If at any time you have questions, you can always forward them to enquiries@bbrd.org.au