Systemwide Membership
A connected tennis community
Supporting a safe, consistent experience across our sport
Tennis is played in many different ways across New Zealand, through clubs, competitions, coaching programmes, tournaments, social leagues and casual court bookings.
As our tennis community grows and becomes more connected, it's important that everyone participates within a shared framework of standards and expectations.
A systemwide membership approach helps create a consistent and safe environment for everyone involved in tennis, regardless of how they participate.
What does this mean?
When people engage with tennis through a club membership, tournament entry, league participation, court booking platform or other tennis programme, they become part of the wider tennis community.
This means participants agree to follow the policies, regulations and standards that help make tennis safe, welcoming and enjoyable for everyone. These may include policies relating to participant protection, conduct, integrity and wellbeing.
Benefits for clubs and participants
A safer tennis environment
A shared approach to membership helps ensure that important policies apply consistently across the tennis network, creating a safer and more supportive environment for all participants.
Consistent standards across the game
Whether someone is playing at their local club, entering a tournament, joining a social competition or booking a court, the same core expectations and standards apply.
Better support when issues arise
When clubs and tennis organisations operate within the same framework, concerns can be addressed more effectively, and support can be coordinated across the network where required.
Stronger connections across tennis
A connected membership approach helps clubs, LTPs, RTOs and Tennis NZ work together to support participants and strengthen the long-term sustainability of the sport.
A proven approach
Many sports already use systemwide membership models to create greater consistency, improve participant experiences and strengthen governance across their sport. Tennis has adopted a similar approach to help build a stronger and more connected future for the game in New Zealand.
Tennis NZ respects your data privacy and adheres to both its own National Data and Systems Regulations, Privacy Policy and that of the NZ Privacy Act 2020.
Club members' primary relationship remains with their club.
When individuals sign up to a club, they will notice the addition of a request to read and agree to the terms and conditions of membership for your RTO/LTP and Tennis NZ.
By agreeing to these, individuals will become a paid, voting member of your club and a non-voting ‘associate’ member of your RTO/LTP and Tennis New Zealand, affording you the safety and connection of such membership. That’s it!
For casual participants, they will be tagged on the national database as non-voting individual members of your club.
The Tennis NZ system respects the privacy of your data, you can read the Tennis NZ Privacy Policy here).
The data connection between an individual and their club (and associated data transfer) is bound and covered by the relevant third-party Membership Management System provider's Data Privacy Policy (Clubspark, Pay2Play etc). Tennis NZ are not part of this relationship. The protection and Terms and Conditions for this data will be dependent on which provider the club has chosen.
Tennis NZ offer the Clubspark platform and system free of charge and are working with a number of the leading providers around this connection and privacy. Part of this agreement between club and provider is allowing the National Body (and relevant tennis parties) access to the data gathered by the provider for a select set of uses to benefit the sport.
The Tennis NZ regulations outline the minimum data points we require from the providers - this includes name/D.O.B/ethnicity(optional)/email and membership start and end date. There may be other data gathered by the club that is not provided to Tennis NZ.
All individuals have the ability to ‘opt out’ of communications via the club's Membership Management System provider.
As we continue to grow the sport, we want to understand who participates and how, as well as keeping everyone safe through mechanisms like the Code of Conduct.
What this means for clubs is that, initially, anyone who digitally connects (for example, books a court, enters a tournament, or signs up to a club) would become a non-voting member.
For those who are 'trying out' or attending informal open days/coaching sessions, we would not expect clubs to require them to join the club as a paid member in the first instance, however, continue to use reasonable endeavours to join them into the system where appropriate - as clubs do currently.
For example, if you have an online booking system for casuals you may suggest that people arriving at the club use it so their details are recorded. There is no need to manually record casual visitors.
More guidance on non-members can be found here.
Anyone who connects to the system would be put into the club (and national) database as a non-voting 'member' of your club (as the Act requires).
This is the legal terminology of 'member' and is used as the Act requires the constitution to state how a person becomes (and ceases) to be a 'member'.
However, this is not the same as a paid up 'club member' which we all understand to be someone who has paid a subscription or fee for access to the courts for a defined period (usually 12 months).
This change does not entitle casual participants to any benefits or rights other than what they have paid for, unless expressly written into your constitution.
The systemwide membership approach is designed to ensure all those who participate in our sport (members + casuals, parents, officials, coaches etc) are connected and protected by national policies around safety. This system also allows clubs to know that they too are covered by these policies which create a safer, more connected environment for all.
Pragmatically, this system will only connect those who connect into the sport, so anyone who joins a club, or a casual who books a court, or enters a business house league etc. Where someone comes along to try the club out, or plays with a member but doesn't book the court - the system won’t connect them.
In terms of parents, there are two reasons for that provision:
- There are issues with enforceability of contracts with juniors
- We (and we are sure clubs) want parents to comply with the same behaviours and standards as all other participants.
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