June 2013 letter to Pegasus from the Chair of SCA Ltd.

I never expected my term as Chair of SCA Ltd to begin so busily, but here I am, and you’ll find this and the last issue of Pegasus packed full of signs of our work, both those we are proud of accomplishing, and those decisions we greatly regret having to make.

Talking of regret, I regret to announce that at the request of the group, SCA Ltd voted to close the shire of Boesenberg on Monday 6 May. It always saddens us to be the ones who formalise decisions like this, but the cycle of life goes on and we are gladdened to announce a new proposed canton of Oxington Chase under the sponsorship of the Barony of Mordenvale. We hope this new group based around Port Macquarie will prosper and flourish into a full group.

I probably should also take this chance to talk about what SCA Ltd actually does. SCA Ltd is the legal entity for the SCA in Australia, it’s the equivalent of SCANZ in New Zealand, and takes on many of the roles SCA Inc does in North America. We are the people who make sure the SCA in Australia complies with mundane legislation so that we don’t get in trouble, occasionally we intercede with mundane authorities to negotiate a more favourable outcome for the organisation and mostly we create policies to ensure that we won’t get in trouble with the law. This includes difficult areas such as child protection, weapons legislation, and bullying and harassment. We also monitor SCA Inc policies for their compliance with Australian law.

SCA Ltd is structured as a non-profit company, with each SCA branch in Australia as a sub-branch of the company. This makes us the body that gets in trouble if contracts, grants, leases and such agreements are not made properly. It also means we are responsible for financial legislation such as GST, income tax, maintaining our non-profit status, and generally overseeing the finances of the SCA in Australia. We are responsible for approving the formation and closure of new groups as we become legally liable for them. We are responsible for administering your memberships, making sure there is insurance cover and even this newsletter. Of course we do this with the vast majority of the work being done by wonderful people like our Pegasus editor and registrar.

Basically, SCA Ltd does all the messy bureaucratic mundane things that let us continue to do medieval recreation. And with that, I’ll leave you to read about what else we have been doing this year and last.

Regards

Baroness Teffania de Tuckerton (Tiffany Brown)
Chair, SCA Ltd