The end of the year arrives and the question shows up at the church office: so what about the club's planning for next year? In practice, what usually circulates among directors is a loose file inherited from another club, with the cover swapped and last year's dates hidden somewhere in the middle.
The Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual, from the South American Division (SAD), doesn't publish a single official annual planning form. But it does spell out, in plain terms, what needs to be planned, in how many stages, and who approves each part. This article organizes that into eight sections and a month-by-month template you can copy and adapt to your club's reality.
If what you're after are the year's key dates — World Pathfinder Day, Scarf Week, camporees — the right place is the annual club calendar. Here we take care of the document itself: what to write, in what order, and who signs at the bottom.
What is the club's annual planning — and who approves it?
The topic has an exact address in the manual: chapter 3 of the Pathfinder Club Administrative Manual (South American Division, 2020 edition), fittingly titled Administration and Planning. In section 3.1, the Manual states that planning should be organized into three distinct sessions: annual, monthly, and daily. And that all stages must be finished before the local club's activities begin, with the whole plan reviewed monthly, because planning is a living thing.
Who's involved? The whole leadership team. The Manual names the director, associate directors, secretary, treasurer, chaplain, counseling elder, instructors, and counselors specifically. But steering, executing, adapting, and evaluating the plan is the director's responsibility — when everyone gets involved, everyone feels responsible; when no one steers it, the document dies in a drawer.
The part that causes the most confusion is approval. There are three different bodies involved, and it's worth memorizing them:
- Executive Committee (the leadership team: director, associate directors, secretary, and the district pastor or elder) — proposes the goal plan and the annual planning.
- Regular Committee (the whole leadership: the Executive Committee plus counselors, instructors, chaplain, and treasurer) — discusses and approves what the Executive Committee proposed.
- Church Board — must approve the annual agenda. The Manual uses the word “mandatory.”
What varies: the month the club sits down to plan, the file format (spreadsheet, text document, PDF), whether the Conference/Mission asks for a copy and by what deadline. That's decided by your Field (Conference or Mission), usually communicated through the Regional or District coordinator. Ask before you print.
Why all the formality? Because the approved document is what turns an idea into an official club activity. That matters well beyond paperwork: the annual insurance coverage applies to regular meetings and events authorized by the local church board. An activity nobody approved is an activity that, on the worst day of the year, can end up with no coverage at all.
What are the document's 8 planning sections?
An honest heads-up before the table: the Manual doesn't use the phrase “eight sections.” It lists, in section 3.1, what needs to be planned (regular meetings, Classes, Honors, special activities, budget, and evaluation meetings) and spreads the rest across the chapters on organization, secretary duties, and finances. The eight sections below are an editorial organization of that content in document form — each one anchored in a real section of the Manual.
| # | Section | What it includes | Basis in the Manual | Who approves |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Year's goal plan | The year's focus: growing membership numbers, developing new leaders, a baptism target, one community project per month, a partnership with a city agency | 3.3.1 (director's duties) | Executive Committee, effective from the very first meeting |
| 2 | Team, units, and committees | Names and roles, the division of units (6 to 8 Pathfinders each), and the fixed dates for committee meetings | 3.2 and 3.3 | The director and associates come from the church's Nominating Committee; the other roles, from the Executive Committee |
| 3 | Annual agenda (the skeleton) | Date, activity, location, and person in charge for every regular meeting, Field/Union/Division event, church program, and holiday | 3.1 | Church Board (mandatory) |
| 4 | Class and Honor program | Schedule of requirements by Class, instructor for each one, materials, and evaluation method | 3.1 and 4.1.2 | Regular Committee, coordinated by the associate directors |
| 5 | Special activities and ceremonies | Scarf induction, investiture, Pathfinder Day and thanksgiving service, week of prayer, Mother's Day and Father's Day tributes, campouts, hikes, civic parades, fairs, and charity drives | 3.1 | Executive Committee; anything involving the church goes through the Church Board |
| 6 | Budget | Dues, uniforms, equipment, event and course registration fees, fundraising campaigns, and the mandatory annual insurance | 3.1 and 3.6 | Executive Committee, with all funds going through the church treasury |
| 7 | Secretary, records, and assets | Member registration in the official system, enrollment and health forms, minutes book, record of acts, and asset inventory | 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.5 | The asset inventory is voted on annually by the Church Board |
| 8 | Evaluation and adjustment | Dates for evaluation meetings, club diagnostic form, unit evaluations, and Award of Excellence criteria | 3.1, 3.3.6, and 4.7 | Regular Committee evaluates and recommends; Executive Committee decides |
If your document has these eight sections filled in, it's complete from the Manual's point of view. Anything not on this list — a nice logo, the year's memory verse, the club T-shirt — is a legitimate extra, but it doesn't replace any of the sections.
A field note: section 3 is what the Manual calls the program skeleton. It says a two-hour meeting is usually enough to put it together — but it notes that this step depends heavily on the Field's, the region's, and the local church's own planning, meaning the leadership team needs to show up with all three calendars and the holiday list in hand. What actually eats up time isn't the skeleton: it's the meat of sections 4 and 6.
What does the club's month-by-month planning look like?
The table below isn't the year's event list — it's the leadership team's work cycle: what gets decided each month and which piece of the document gets finished. It was adapted from the Manual's suggested example (section 3.1), which opens the year with three general planning dates in January plus basic leadership training run by the Conference, continues with sign-ups and the club's opening in February, and wraps up with investiture in December. The Manual doesn't specify which day of the week the club meets — in its own sample memo the meetings are on Sundays, and the diagnostic form counts Saturday and Sunday meetings separately.
| Month | Leadership focus | What gets finished |
|---|---|---|
| December (previous year) | Leadership team appointed by the church's Nominating Committee and first conversation about the year's focus | Director and associates set |
| January | General planning sessions and basic leadership training run by the Field | Goal plan (section 1) and draft annual agenda (section 3) |
| February | Registration launch, enrollment, and club opening | Annual agenda approved by the Church Board and budget finalized (sections 3 and 6) |
| March | Regular meetings settle into rhythm and member registration in the official system closes | Registration and annual insurance up to date (section 7) |
| April | First serious evaluation: what's already off the page and what's stuck | Minutes from the first planning review (section 8) |
| May | Bible Class and spiritual preparation; checking the requirements schedule | Class program adjusted (section 4) |
| June | Club campout: time to complete the requirements that only exist in the field | Field requirements logged with the secretary |
| July | School vacation and Field events; mid-year review | Mid-year report for the church |
| August | Getting back into gear, checking outstanding requirements, and boosting the treasury | List of pending items by Class and by Pathfinder |
| September | A packed month in the Manual's example: back-to-back regular meetings, the September 7th civic parade, and a focus on the Spring Baptism | Special activities carried out (section 5) |
| October | Wrapping up requirements, assembling the folders, and nominating candidates for the Award of Excellence at the Regular Committee | Investiture folders ready for evaluation |
| November | Final review of Classes and Honors with the Regional coordinator; planning for next year begins | Investiture approvals and next year's first draft |
| December | Investiture, wrap-up of activities, and financial report | Final report, updated asset inventory, and closed accounts |
What's official and what's custom here: the Manual presents this layout as a suggested example, not a mandatory calendar. A club year that starts in February and ends in December is the most common practice in Brazil, not a Division rule. It's your Conference or Mission that sets the actual dates for training, camporees, and Class evaluations. The custom of leaving one free month for Pathfinders to spend with their families (and the leadership team with theirs), for instance, is something the Manual itself presents in a footnote as a good suggestion to discuss with the church and families — not as a requirement.
To turn each row of this table into a Saturday program, the next step is the meeting outline: that's where the annual agenda becomes a schedule, materials, and a person in charge.
Read alsoPathfinder Club BylawsWhat can't be missing from the club's budget?
Section 6 is the one that most often goes missing from improvised plans — and the one that hurts the most later. The Manual lists, in section 3.1, what the annual budget needs to cover:
- Dues or membership fees;
- Official (dress) uniform and activity uniform;
- Equipment purchases: tents, tools, first-aid supplies, ropes, manuals, books, musical instruments;
- Field, Union, and Division events — registration, transportation, and meals;
- Training course registration fees;
- Fundraising campaigns;
- Mandatory annual insurance.
Two rules in the Manual shape how you write this section. The first: every financial transaction of the club goes through the local church treasury — the club treasurer tracks the money and reports on it, but doesn't hold onto it. The second: the asset inventory is voted on annually by the Church Board, listing each item's name, description, condition, estimated value, and acquisition date. This exists so nothing gets lost when leadership changes and so the church's property insurance can cover losses in case of theft.
The Manual is also clear about dues: everyone pays, including leadership team members, and even in a very low-income area a symbolic amount is charged — because anything worthwhile comes with a cost. But no young person is left out for being unable to pay: the leadership looks for sponsors or benefactors who “adopt” the Pathfinder financially, and, according to the Manual itself, should make it clear to the child that someone interested in their well-being is covering their expenses. The details on cash handling, reporting, and fundraising campaigns are in the article on club treasury.
A deadline that often catches directors off guard — with one caveat about the date. The official SGC page on adventistas.org states that the policy expires on March 31 and that renewal for the new coverage period runs from March 1 to 31. The important detail: that page was published in February 2015 and was still live with that same text when we checked, in July 2026 — but we found no official confirmation that the window is still the same in 2026. Treat it as a ballpark (insurance gets sorted out early in the year, not in November), never as a fixed date.
The Manual, for its part, doesn't set a fixed day: it directs the club to get the deadline for registering members in the system from the Field itself, and it records insurance billing as semi-annual, in April and August (2020 edition, section 3.5). Since deadlines and billing methods change from year to year, confirm this year's with your Conference or Mission before closing the budget.
How do you fit Classes and Honors in without a last-minute scramble?
It's the club's job to teach all the requirements of the regular and advanced Classes over the course of the year, so that nothing is missing come investiture. The Manual lays out the method in section 4.1.2, and it's simpler than it looks.
- Start with the club's annual calendar. Without it, the instructor is planning in a vacuum.
- Count the days actually available for instruction, subtracting events, holidays, and special programs.
- Mark the requirements that can only be met in specific situations first — anything requiring a campout goes on the campout date, anything requiring the outdoors goes on the hike.
- Spread the rest across the regular meetings, keeping in mind that some requirements take more than one session.
For each requirement, the Manual asks for five pieces of information on paper: requirement, number of classes, materials, methodology, and evaluation method. It seems like overkill the first time; by the third meeting of the year, it's what saves the day when an instructor gets sick and needs to hand the class off to someone else.
And there's an explicit deadline that almost no one meets: the curriculum planning must be ready at least two weeks before the club starts its activities (Manual, 4.1.2). Not on opening day — two weeks before it.
At the monthly level, the Manual suggests each Class have its own chart with date, activity, corresponding requirement, and person in charge, integrated into the club's overall planning. It's that chart that prevents the classic November scene: discovering that three requirements were never taught.
How do you evaluate and correct the plan throughout the year?
Planning without evaluation is fiction. That's why section 8 has its own dates in the document — and the Manual specifies how often:
- Executive Committee: at least one meeting a month, to decide on administrative matters.
- Regular Committee: at least one meeting a month for the club's diagnostic review; the Manual also recommends weekly check-ins to keep the plan moving.
- Before every regular meeting: a quick leadership huddle to go over the day's details.
The Regular Committee works as a forum: when a problem comes up, a solution is discussed, put into practice, and at the next meeting, evaluated to see if it worked. That short cycle is what allows the plan to be adjusted without redoing the entire year.
The Manual includes two ready-made forms in its appendices — and it's worth knowing who fills out each one, because that changes how they're used. Form C, Club Diagnostic Form, is not a self-assessment by the leadership team: it's filled out by the District or Regional coordinator during a club visit, in two copies, precisely so the leadership keeps the observations raised and works on them. It covers club structure, the unit system, secretary duties, treasury, community activities, and visits to parents. Form D, Unit Evaluation Form, on the other hand, belongs to the counselor, filled out month by month: punctuality, uniform, materials, discipline, Bible reading, community service, and dues. Copying the logic of both into your own document is the shortest path to writing section 8 — and it also gets the club ready for the Regional coordinator's visit.
At the end of the year, this section leads to the Award of Excellence: the Regular Committee nominates the names, the Executive Committee checks whether all the criteria were met, and decides which ceremony it will be presented at — just once a year. The award belongs to the club, is valid for one year, and is collected back before the next presentation. Recording all of this is the job of the club secretary, who keeps the minutes, records of acts, and reports.
Spreadsheet, SGC, or management system: what solves what?
It's worth separating these honestly, because a lot of people confuse the planning document with the registration system.
| Tool | Solves | Doesn't solve |
|---|---|---|
| SGC — the South American Division's official Club Management System, online since January 26, 2015 | Official member registration, health form, automatic annual insurance request, transfers between clubs, Class and Honor records | Doesn't write your annual plan or approve anything at your church |
| Planning document (text or spreadsheet) | The eight sections, the signatures, the history of what was decided and voted on | Doesn't count as an official member record or an insurance request |
| Support systems — including Desbravai | Help with day-to-day work: attendance, communication with families, events, tracking Classes | Don't replace the SGC. No third-party system handles the official registration of a member within the church structure or takes out the insurance |
In other words: registration and insurance only happen in the SGC — that's non-negotiable, and it's where the club needs to be up to date before any other tool enters the picture. If you don't have access yet, start with the guide on what the SGC is and how to log in.
The annual plan, though, remains a club document, discussed in committee and signed by people. No tool decides your year's focus — that's a leadership conversation, with the pastor nearby and the church kept in the loop.