New Zealand edition. This guide is written for volunteer-run clubs in New Zealand. Where rules differ — grants, tax, incorporation, safeguarding — follow the New Zealand-specific pointers below or check with your national body.
Half past five on a Wednesday, a gazebo goes up beside a suburban park. A laptop sits on the tailgate of a hatchback with a download box cabled to it. Between six and seven-thirty, ninety-odd people arrive in ones and twos, collect a map, run off into the streets, come back sweaty, tap a chip and get a printed split time before they have caught their breath. By dark it is all in the trailer and the park looks like nobody was ever there.
None of that was created on the night. It exists because a mapper walked those streets months ago, a course setter spent four evenings designing eight courses on that map, a controller drove out and checked every control site, and someone printed the maps on Sunday. An orienteering club is not a club with a season — it is a small events company that produces twenty to forty events a year for a membership that is also its entire workforce. Every event is a product with a design phase, a quality-assurance phase and a delivery phase, and the club's job is to keep three or four of those pipelines moving at once.
This guide covers the club side of that: how to look after the map library, how the mapper, planner and controller roles fit together, how event day actually runs from registration through to the last control coming home, and how to build a season-long series with entry pricing that funds the maps without frightening off newcomers. It assumes a volunteer committee, no paid staff and a trailer full of equipment that somebody has to tow.
The club as a rotating events company
Different event formats have wildly different production costs, and a healthy program mixes them deliberately.
| Format | Lead time | Map requirement | Roles needed on the day | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street or park series round | 4-6 weeks | Street map, cheap to update | 3-5 people | Volume, recruitment, weekday habit |
| Park sprint | 6-8 weeks | Sprint-spec map, detailed | 5-8 people | Fast, spectator-friendly, good for schools |
| Bush or forest event | 3-6 months | Full terrain map, expensive | 8-15 people | The core of the sport, the big turnouts |
| Score event | 4 weeks | Any existing map | 3-5 people | Easy to run, forgiving of mixed abilities |
| Night event | 6 weeks | Existing map, extra reflectors | 5-8 people plus a sweeper | Cheap winter content, strong club culture |
| Relay or club championship | 3-4 months | Terrain map with enough area | 10-15 people | Identity, and a reason for the whole club to turn up |
| Schools or come-and-try event | 3-4 weeks | Simple park map | 4-6 people plus helpers | Your pipeline — see how to run a come and try day |
Build the year backwards from the two or three events that are hard. Lock the bush events and the club championships into the calendar first, because they need maps, permissions and a controller; then fill the weeks with street rounds and score events, which a competent volunteer can produce in a fortnight.
The single most useful artefact your committee can maintain is a simple board — one row per event, with the date, the map, the planner, the controller and the organiser. Publish it. Blank cells are visible commitments waiting to be filled, and people volunteer for a blank cell far more readily than they answer a general appeal.
Clubs in New Zealand affiliate to the national federation, generally through a regional grouping that coordinates the calendar and the interclub competitions. The national body administers insurance, mapping standards and the pathway to nationals. In practice the regional calendar is what determines when your club can hold a significant event, and a per-entry levy to the national body is normally built into your entry pricing.
Maps — the asset you keep re-buying
A map is the only thing an orienteering club owns that appreciates in usefulness and depreciates in accuracy at the same time. Suburbs get new fences and infill housing. Forests are logged, burnt or fenced. A map surveyed eight years ago will still work for a score event and will absolutely ruin a championship.
Keep a map register. It is a spreadsheet, it takes an hour to set up, and it prevents the two failures that hurt most — planning an event on a map that is out of date, and losing the source file when a mapper moves house.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Map name and area | Obvious, until two maps overlap and nobody knows which is current |
| Scale and specification | Sprint and terrain specifications differ; setting to the wrong one is a fairness problem |
| Surveyed and updated | Drives the re-survey decision |
| Mapper and contract | Who did it, what they were paid, what was agreed about ownership |
| Source file location | The club's copy, in club storage, not on one person's laptop |
| Permission holder | Who owns or manages the land, and who granted access last time |
| Embargo status | Whether the area is closed to training before an event |
| Print notes | Paper stock, print supplier, last print run, unit cost |
Three habits follow from that register. Own the file. Make it a written condition of every mapping engagement that the club receives the editable source file and the right to use and update it — a paid map you cannot edit is a wasting asset. Budget re-survey, not just survey. A good working assumption for a suburban street map is a light refresh every couple of years; for terrain, a partial update before any event of consequence. Grow a mapper. Send an interested member to a mapping workshop, give them a small park to draw, and pay them properly for the next one. Clubs with an in-house mapper produce far more events than clubs that have to commission every map.
On printing, decide between a pre-print run and print-on-demand and be honest about waste. Pre-printing is cheaper per map and produces boxes of surplus maps with last year's courses on them; on-demand printing costs more per sheet but lets you fix a control site three days out. Waterproof paper is worth it for terrain events and rarely worth it for a summer street round.
Course setting and the controller
The three-role split is the quality system of the entire sport, and clubs that blur it produce events people complain about for years.
| Role | Owns | Common failure when the role is skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Mapper | The map's accuracy and specification | Unfair control sites nobody could have found |
| Planner or course setter | Course design, control sites, descriptions, the printed map | Courses too long, too easy, or unfair to one class |
| Controller | Independent check of everything the planner did | Wrong control codes, missing sites, unsafe crossings |
| Organiser | Permissions, parking, entries, equipment, people, timing | An event that starts forty minutes late |
Planning courses that are the right length
Course length is derived from a target winning time, not chosen. Decide the winning time for each class first, then work backwards using a climb-adjusted estimate of running speed in that terrain.
| Class group | Typical target winning time | Technical difficulty | Design intent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very easy, first-timers | 15-20 minutes | Track and line features only | Nobody gets lost. Everybody finishes. |
| Junior and novice | 20-30 minutes | Simple, handrails throughout | Confidence, with one small decision |
| Intermediate | 30-40 minutes | Some route choice, safe attack points | The learning ground |
| Open short and veteran classes | 35-45 minutes | Full technical difficulty | Navigation, not fitness |
| Open long | 50-70 minutes | Full technical difficulty | The proper test |
Then apply the design rules that make a course feel fair: give every leg at least two plausible routes; avoid dog-legs where returning runners point the way to the control; never place a control where the only sensible route crosses a road, a fence you have not got permission for, or a hazard; make the first control a confidence-builder; and keep the run-in short enough that spectators see the finish.
What the controller actually does
The controller is not a proofreader. They are an independent, experienced member — ideally from another club for anything significant — who visits every control site and signs off that the event is fair, safe and correct. A working checklist:
- Walk or visit every control site and confirm the feature matches the map and the description
- Check every control code against the master list and the map overprint
- Verify course lengths, climb and target winning times against the class list
- Check control descriptions, including the symbolic ones, for accuracy
- Confirm the start triangle, finish, and the taped routes are correct on the ground
- Review out-of-bounds areas, crossing points and any dangerous features are marked
- Confirm the safety bearing printed on the map is correct from every part of the area
- Check the map print quality and legibility, especially in low light for a night event
- Review the start list, start intervals and the punching setup
- Agree the cut-off time, the sweep plan and the all-in procedure with the organiser
The rule that carries all of it: nobody controls their own courses, and nobody who has seen the courses runs them. Enforce it socially, so the planner takes it as a compliment rather than an insult.
The setter's timeline
| When | What |
|---|---|
| T-8 weeks | Map confirmed, land permission confirmed, controller appointed |
| T-6 weeks | Draft courses on screen, class list and target winning times agreed |
| T-4 weeks | Control sites visited and flagged; descriptions drafted |
| T-3 weeks | Controller's first visit; changes made |
| T-2 weeks | Courses locked; map files sent to print; entries open or close |
| T-1 week | Controller signs off; start list built; equipment checked and charged |
| T-2 days | Control units programmed and tested; signage and tape packed |
| T-1 day | Controls hung, or the hanging plan and vehicle allocations confirmed |
Event day — registration, punching, results and control collection
A run sheet turns an anxious morning into a series of small jobs. Write it once, adapt it per event, and put a name against every line.
| Clock | Job |
|---|---|
| Minus 2 hours | Parking signs and course-closed signs out; assembly area set up; controls hung |
| Minus 90 min | Registration and hire-chip desk open; download laptop booted and tested |
| Minus 60 min | Start lane taped and staffed; clear and check units live; map boxes at the start |
| Minus 30 min | First start briefing; the safety and cut-off announcement made publicly |
| Start | Start intervals held; late starters handled by a nominated official |
| Rolling | Download tent processes finishers; results printed or published progressively |
| Course close | All-in call; sweeper dispatched; missing runners identified from the download log |
| After close | Control collection begins only when every runner is accounted for |
| Pack-up | Equipment counted back into the trailer against a list; results published |
Registration. Pre-entry with a small discount and entry-on-day at a slightly higher price is the pattern that works — pre-entry lets you print the right number of maps and build a start list; entry-on-day is how you convert the person who saw your sign at the park gate. Keep the on-day desk simple: name, class, chip number or hire, contact number, and payment. Anything more sophisticated at a card table in the wind becomes a queue.
Punching and hire chips. Whatever electronic punching system your club uses, the operational rules are the same. Keep a hire register with the chip number against a name and a phone number, take a deposit or a card imprint if your club has had losses, and reconcile the register before the trailer leaves. Programme and test control units the week before, not on the morning, and carry spare units and a manual pin-punch backup for the day a unit dies.
Mispunches and protests. Publish the process before you need it. A mispunch is disqualification, the download operator is not the person who decides, and a genuine query goes to the controller in writing on the day. Keep the raw download data — it settles almost every dispute in under a minute.
Safety and the all-in. State a course-closing time out loud at the start and print it on the map. Every competitor must report to download whether they finish or retire, and retiring runners must physically pass through download. When the course closes, the download log gives you the list of who is still out; a sweeper walks the courses in reverse, and control collection does not begin until every name is ticked. That sequencing is not bureaucratic fussiness — collecting controls while someone is still navigating to them is how a lost runner becomes a search.
Control collection. Split the map into collection zones, assign each to a person with a vehicle where possible, hand out a printed list of codes and locations per zone, and require each collector to check in by phone when their zone is clear. Count the units back against the master list at the trailer. A missing unit found on Monday costs a replacement; a missing unit nobody notices costs the next event.
Building a series that pays for itself
A season-long series is the best product an orienteering club has. It converts one-off curiosity into a weekly habit, it spreads the workload across many small events, and it produces the standings and rivalries that keep people coming.
Design it with four decisions.
- Number of rounds and how many count. Ten to fifteen rounds with the best six or eight counting is the sweet spot. Enough that missing three does not end anyone's season, few enough that the standings still mean something.
- Scoring. Points by finishing position within class works but punishes small classes. A percentage-of-winner's-time model handles mixed fields better, and a handicap or age-adjusted model keeps a wider spread of people interested.
- Class structure. Keep the number of classes small enough that each has a real contest. Many clubs run a short/medium/long structure with age and gender categories applied to the standings rather than to the courses.
- Pricing. Set a casual entry price, a discounted pre-entry price, a family cap so a household never pays four times, and a series pass that is worth roughly two-thirds of the individual entries. The pass is the important one — a member who has pre-paid for the series turns up in the rain. Our guide on season pass versus single event tickets works through the trade-offs.
A worked example for a fifteen-round street series, with illustrative numbers: 120 entries a round, of which 70 are series-pass holders, 30 are pre-entered casuals and 20 pay on the night. Your costs per round are map printing, a small park permit or hire fee, the state or national per-entry levy, and equipment depreciation. Your fixed costs across the season are map updates, insurance, replacement control units and the trailer. Price the series pass so pass-holders alone cover the per-round costs, and let the casual entries fund the map program. Model it in the club budget template before you publish a price, and revisit it at the end of each season.
Casual entries at a park or street round in New Zealand commonly sit between NZ$8 and NZ$15, with juniors free or heavily discounted, a family cap and a series pass priced at around ten to twelve single entries. Forest events carry a higher price because the mapping does. Community trusts and gaming trusts are the usual source of funding for control units, mapping and trailers, and they respond well to a request for named equipment.
Volunteers, juniors and the people pipeline
The workload is unusual: not a weekly roster of small jobs, but a handful of big commitments concentrated on a few people. That concentration is what kills clubs, and the cure is cultural rather than administrative — the expectation that every adult member plans or organises one event a year, stated at join time and repeated at every annual meeting.
Support that expectation with structure. Pair every first-time planner with an experienced one. Keep a controller pool and deliberately add to it, because a shortage of controllers caps how many real events your club can hold. Break event day into named roles that a newcomer can do without training — car park, registration desk, start lane, download, control collection — and roster them, using something like the volunteer roster template so nobody is asked twice in a season while three people are never asked at all. Credit the work publicly at the presentation night.
Juniors need their own settings. A string course for the youngest, a very easy course that genuinely cannot be failed, a whistle rule, a published cut-off time and a buddy requirement for the youngest age group. Schools programs are the single most effective recruiting channel the sport has — a coached session on a simple park map with a teacher present converts far better than an open-invitation advertisement, and it also builds a relationship with a school whose grounds you may want to map later. Wherever children participate, follow the child-safe requirements of your governing body and the relevant authority, and screen adults in supervisory roles accordingly.
Results, rankings and the club website
Results are your marketing. A newcomer who ran a course on Wednesday and found their name, time and splits published that evening comes back; one who never sees a result quietly assumes nobody noticed they were there. Publish provisional results the same night, final results with splits inside a couple of days, and running series standings after every round.
Keep the archive. Years of event results, maps and course lengths are a genuine asset — they answer "when did we last use this area?", they let a planner see whether a course length worked, and they give search engines a large body of local, specific, regularly updated content that brings the sport free attention. Promote each round properly too; how to promote a club event covers the channels that work for weekday events.
From map file to results page without the spreadsheet chain
Most orienteering clubs run their season on four disconnected things — a fixtures page someone edits by hand, a pre-entry form, a results folder, and a group chat where the roster gets negotiated. ClubHelix puts them on one club website: competitions with rounds, results and standings for the series, events with entries, capacity and waitlists for each round, volunteer rostering for the jobs on the day, and reports so the committee can see entries, income and participation by round instead of reconstructing it in April.
Everything runs on your own domain, so the series standings, the fixture list and the come-and-try page all live where people already look. There is a free tier to try it on and published pricing when you grow, and a committee can set up a club site in an evening — roughly the time it takes to hang a course.
Frequently asked questions
What roles do you need to put on an orienteering event?
At minimum a planner who designs the courses, a controller who independently checks them, and an organiser who handles permissions, entries, equipment and people on the day. Larger events add a start official, a download and results operator, a car park coordinator and a control collection team. The planner and controller must be different people.
What does an orienteering controller do?
The controller independently verifies that the event is fair, safe and correct — visiting every control site, checking codes and descriptions against the map, confirming course lengths against target winning times, reviewing out-of-bounds and crossing points, and signing off the safety bearing and cut-off arrangements. They are appointed early enough to influence the courses, not brought in as a proofreader the week before.
How long should orienteering courses be?
Set the target winning time for each class first, then derive the length from expected running speed in that terrain including climb. Common targets run from about fifteen minutes for a first-timers' course to somewhere between fifty and seventy minutes for the longest class. Publishing the target winning times alongside course lengths helps competitors choose the right course.
How should a club price a street orienteering series?
Offer a casual entry price, a slightly cheaper pre-entry price, a family cap and a series pass worth roughly two-thirds of the individual entries it replaces. Price the pass so pass-holders cover the per-round costs, and treat casual entries as the funding for map updates and equipment replacement.
What happens if someone does not come back from a course?
Every competitor must pass through download whether they finish or retire, so the download log tells you exactly who is still out at the course-closing time. A sweeper walks the courses in reverse, control collection is held until every name is accounted for, and the club escalates to emergency services according to a procedure agreed before the event rather than invented on the spot.
Keep reading — how to organise a sports carnival covers the big-day logistics in more depth, and how to run a come and try day is the recruiting event that fills your next series.
