Join the Club

Join the CEC

Renew your Membership

Online Store

Subscribe to our eBulletin

Section Executive Resources

	Board Members' Handbook		National eBulletin Submissions		Board Meetings
	Access to the Membership Database		Trip Waivers and Incident Reporting		Section Email Lists
	Sharing Ideas Amongst Sections		Submissions to the ACC Gazette		Fundraising & Grants
	Facility Bookings for Section Trips		Policy for persons under the age of majority		Section Newsletters

Section Chairs, Reps and Executive Committee members

On this page we have listed some of the services that the National Office provides for the sections. It is a work in progress. We hope that you will be able to find the information that your require on this page, but if you do not, please contact us at:

Board Meetings

Board meetings occur twice per year, usually held in Canmore Alberta. They are attended by the national Executive Committee plus a Section Representative from every section. Each Section Rep is responsible for submitting a Section Report. In order to facilitate the report a draft template has been created.

Also to assist Sections with their By-Laws, a draft has been created that Sections may use as a template.

	Section Report template		Board Package (includes Travel Expense info)
	Draft By-Laws for Sections		Minutes from previous meetings

Board Members' Handbook

Items of interest to Board Members:

Governance:					Structure:
		Legislation					Executive Committee
				1909			Board of Directors
				1987			Board Roles
		Constitution					National Committees and Special Interest Groups
		By-laws					National Office Staff
History:							National Organization Chart
		About the Club

Access to the Membership Database

Section Executive can access the membership database directly from the Alpine Club of Canada website. Newsletter editors can download address labels, and Sections can access all kinds of membership information any time they want. The membership database provides access to lists of new, renewed and lapsed members as well as information about Section members such as their membership start dates, the types of memberships they have (family, single, life, etc.), the upgrades they have purchased (CAJ, Facilities) and more.

The membership database also tracks members who choose the option of receiving Section e-bulletins and/or electronic versions of your traditional Section newsletter. It is important that Section newsletter editors and e-bulletin coordinators check the membership database regularly to update their mailing lists.

Federal privacy laws prohibit the sharing of member contact information with 3rd parties. You are permitted to use the contact information in the Membership Database to distribute Alpine Club of Canada information (ie, trips, socials, member notices, club news etc) or to check the status of memberships, but you cannot use it for any other reason. We cannot stress strongly enough the importance of keeping the information in the database confidential. We will issue up to three passwords per Section, and the passwords will be changed on a regular basis to protect the integrity of the database. It is imperative that the log-in names and passwords are not given to anyone other than the people to whom they are issued.

We recommend that each Section Chair request passwords for the chairperson, the membership coordinator/secretary and the newsletter editor. When any of these volunteers change, we will delete their account and open one for the new volunteer. For more information, or to request a password, email .

Section Email Lists

ACC members can renew and join the Club online via the national website. In conjunction with this, members can also sign up to receive Section e-bulletins and/or Section traditional newsletters in an electronic format while they are renewing or joining online.

The national office has the capability to maintain your Section e-mail lists if you choose. If your Section would like to use this service, you will need to send us your existing list of email addresses and we will integrate them into our database. You will then be able to download the current list of members who want to receive e-bulletins from your Section anytime you want.

By using this service, your email and newsletter coordinators will no longer have to maintain the Section email lists manually (including manually adding the members who sign up for e-bulletins and electronic versions of your newsletter via the national database). Members whose memberships lapse will automatically be removed from the email list.

If you choose to use this service, you will have two options for sending your emails:

1. you can purchase a bulk mailer program in order to download the addresses from our database and send the emails. Bulk mailer programs are cheap (less than $100) and easy to use. Once you have a bulk mailer program, you can send messages to your members whenever and as often as you want.
2. Sections can send their email message to the national office, and we will re-direct the message to your members for you. We will do this a maximum of once per week, but we are only prepared to do this for you for the first year only. After that, you will need to purchase a bulk mailer program.

If you are interested in having the national office maintain your email lists, please contact Toby Harper, Programs Director, at , and he will tell you what we need in order to get the ball rolling.

If you choose to continue to maintain your own email lists, please inform your email and newsletter coordinators that they need to regularly update their lists with those members who sign up to receive electronic communication on the national database. Please have them contact Toby Harper, Program Director, if they have any questions about doing this.

Submissions to the ACC NewsNet e-Bulletin

The National Office sends out an email bulletin called the NewsNet approximately once a week. Within the ACC NewsNet is an area called "Section News". Sections are invited to submit information on things such as:

• upcoming events (eg. the Rocky Mountain Section's transceiver practice day)
• upcoming speakers (eg. a special speaker at your monthly meeting or social)
• unique courses (eg. the Montreal Section's leadership program)
• special trips or camps (eg. your Section's annual summer or winter camp)
• special initiatives (for example, Thunder Bay's peregrine falcon banding)
• news on access issues in your area (eg. Skaha closure, Gatineau Park issues for climbers, etc.)
• a major event that your Section is planning or that is occurring in your area (eg. a Section camp, ice festival, avalanche courses, etc.)
  

Space will be very limited (one or two sentences), and we are unable to provide details of your submission in the NewsNet. You will need to have a website link if you want NewsNet recipients to know more details about the event.

If you are in doubt whether to submit an event, please submit it anyway. The NewsNet editors will decide whether it can be printed or not. Submit your information to .

Please encourage all of your Section Executive members to subscribe to the NewsNet (they can do so on the homepage of the website).

More about the ACC NewsNet

Submissions to the ACC Gazette

The Gazette is mailed to all members three time/year. It is filled with articles and stories on national and section trips and events, as well as news, notices and other items of interest. Sections are invited to submit items of interest to the rest of the Club. If you would like to submit an article, please contact the Gazette Editor Lynn Martel at .

More about The Gazette

Sharing Ideas Amongst Sections

If you have ideas or news you think may be of interest to other Section executive committees, please send that information to national Secretary Peter Muir at for redistribution. See below for previous ideas that Peter has shared amongst the Sections.

"On the Club trip incident report front, Ray Norman and the Calgary section have taken a great step in addressing the common question of when an incident should be reported by assembling a terrific report protocol. The document they have produced will help trip leaders and others decide if an incident/accident needs to be reported to the national office. Ray tells me that Calgary is reducing the list to a field card size so it can be carried by trip leaders. Many thanks to Ray and Calgary (especially the Calgary safety committee) for their fine work on this, and for offering to share it with other Sections."

Incident Reporting Protocols

"The Thunder Bay Section has coupled climber safety with membership benefits. The attached excerpt describes how section members can receive a $20 rebate for purchasing a helmet. Good idea TB!"

Helmet Promotion

Sharing Section Newsletters

Sharing information between sections can be as simple as sending others your newsletters. When the newsletter editors download label information, simply check the box entitled "newsletter redistribution", and the label list will include all of the other Sections as well as the Executive committee, national office, Lynn Martel, Geoff Powter and a few others.

In addition, there is a webpage with links to all the Sections' online newsletters (where available). To see what other sections are doing with their online newsletters, visit:

Sections' Online Newsletters

Facility Bookings for Section Trips

ACC Section bookings refer to bookings made by Section Trip Leaders. The Section Trips Committee must sanction these trips, list them on the Section’s trips schedule, and they must be open to Section members. For more details:

Facility bookings for Section trips

Policy for persons under the age of majority on trips

Policy for persons under the age of majority on trips

The Alpine Club of Canada has established policies regarding Waiver Administration, Incident Management and Reporting for all ACC activities. This information is available for Activities Coordinators and all Trip Leaders.

Sections are encouraged to fundraise, apply for grants and other sources of revenue in their local areas, however, so that our national Corporate Members and Sponsors are not inundated with requests from various aspects of the Club, it is important that all grant applications or fund raising requests to any of our major Supporters listed on the Supporter page be coordinated through the national office. For more information, please contact Suzan Chamney, Publications Manager, at: