Hi Danielle,
We’ve been reviewing our staff social club after some great questions came up from staff about terms and conditions. It has helped us to identify that we needed to simplify to ensure we were meeting legal obligations of being a ‘club’ – not everything just falls completely under the school banner. (here’s a site that talks more about that and might be helpful – https://sprintlaw.com.au/articles/setting-up-a-workplace-social-club-in-australia-essential-legal-checklist/#What_Legal_Structure_Should_My_Social_Club_Use)
Our staff social committee realised that we didn’t have capacity or desire to be a club that had members and collected fees, so we asked the school to provide some budget as part of staff wellbeing. We are a medium size school so the school leadership has agreed to move to that next year.
We do one staff event a term – things such as drinks and nibbles, light breakfast and coffee, or BBQ. At the end of the year we do a Christmas party. In the period that we have had paying members, we still welcomed non-members and just identified a cost that they could pay per event. As we move to a school supported model we will still have some contribution by people attending eg. nibbles provided, staff buy their own drinks. We have also tried to vary days and times of events over the course of a year so that staff who work on different days or with different schedules can make it to at least one event if they want to. We do have times when members can’t make it and we have had to clarify that they don’t get their contribution refunded if they don’t come.