PARENT INVOLVEMENT

What is the Service Commitment for COPS families?

Families providing their time and talent in service to COPS are an integral part of our team whose value cannot be measured by typical methods. COPS requires each family to provide their services to the team or pay a penalty for not doing so.  The Service Commitment from COPS families is required because of the following:

·         Hosting meets requires a tremendous amount of hours and provides significant income to the team

·         North Texas Swimming encourages large teams to host more meets than other teams

·         COPS wants to provide high quality, competitive meets for all levels of swimmers

·         COPS has lots of members with the technical or professional background to run meets

·         COPS families have proven to be generous with their time

·         The Service Commitment requirement helps document and equalize the service being donated by each family

·         COPS is set up as a non profit organization whose operation relies on the service commitment of their members to minimize dues and keep our overhead as low as possible

The team utilizes a point system to simplify the process of tracking members service commitments, clarify the job responsibilities, and emphasize the value of the jobs that are required to optimize our financial or competitive position. We look forward to families honoring their fair share of their service commitment and learning new jobs that best suit them. We recognize that not all service commitments are created equal and will reward you for being willing to tackle the more technical or complex jobs, or the ones that have a financial impact on the team. 

COPS is known as a premier, competitive swim team with quality parent members.  We are looking forward to seeing new faces in different jobs, and watching our children swim well and having fun. 

City of Plano Swimmers Board of Directors

COPS Service Commitment Point System (Effective 9/1/2007)

• All service positions are assigned a point value.

• Each family, after their first year on the team, will be required to complete a minimum of 50 service points per year.

• During your first year on the team, each new member family must provide one adult family member as an apprentice for two sessions (morning or afternoon) at a swim meet in a major position. New members will be contacted shortly after joining the team to discuss the apprenticeship positions that are available.  

• 50 points per year is the minimum required by each family but we anticipate many of you will continue to offer your service to the team after meeting your minimum requirements so that we can maintain our current depth of competitive meets for all levels of swimmers.

• The penalty for families who provide less than 50 service points to COPS during each fiscal year is $400.

• Points can be earned by completing jobs off the list provided at the beginning of each year.

• Each family must earn 50 points per year but all points in excess of 50 in any given fiscal year will be credited towards the family’s lifetime points. Once a family earns 2,000 lifetime points they are exempt from the yearly points requirements.

• Service positions will be announced in the newsletter and we will continue to use “Meet Director On Line” to sign up for meet positions.

• Sign up for service positions by calling or emailing the Vice President-Volunteers or by calling or emailing the activity or event coordinator.

• The Committee Chairmen or Meet Director for each meet or event will report points earned. 

• Points do not equate to hours. Service positions are assigned points based upon their value to the team in optimizing our competitive or financial position.

• Members earn points upon completion of their responsibilities and need not track time spent on the position, activity, or event.

• The COPS Board of directors reserves the right to change the points requirements or the financial penalty each fiscal year.

COPS Fundraising

Each COPS swimmer is expected to fund raise a minimum of $150 per fiscal year.  For families with two or more swimmers, the required minimum is $250 per family per year.  New member families will have their contribution requirement pro-rated based upon joining during the short course or long course seasons.  These minimum fund raising requirements must be met via the team’s two major fund raising events each year.  The COPS families will be notified once the Board of Directors has chosen the two major fund raising events each year. Families who fall short of their minimum requirement will be invoiced the required minimum less any funds raised by the family.

This amount will appear on the Summer Quarter Membership invoice.

The fund raising requirements may be waived for members who leave the team after the start of the fiscal year upon approval of the treasurer and bookkeeper, and assuming all other dues and fees due the team have been paid in full under the following guidelines:

A member who leaves the team prior to the first fund raiser may ask for a waiver of the fund raising requirement. 

A member, who leaves the team after the first fund raiser but prior to the second, may ask for a waiver of their remaining fund raising requirements not to exceed fifty percent of the fund raising requirement.