Organisation structure overview
This page explains the four organisation models supported by the platform: the standard federation hierarchy, special sport clubs, Smart Clubs for BENZING Live owners, and Community Lofts.
Good to know before you start
- Membership rules differ by organisation type. In the standard hierarchy every fancier belongs to a base organisation through a club; whether they can join multiple clubs at the same time is controlled per country by the multi-club membership setting. Independently of that, a fancier can also be a direct member of one or more sport clubs, one or more Smart Clubs, and one or more Community Lofts.
- Combines and the national level do not hold members directly. They aggregate races and results from base organisations.
- Organisation type cannot be changed after creation. If a different model is needed, a new organisation has to be set up and members migrated.
Organisation structure overview
MyPigeons supports several organisation models. The structure that applies to you depends on your country's federation rules, the competition level you participate in, and whether you race with BENZING Live.
Each organisation type has its own rules for membership, race administration, and how members appear in results. The chosen type affects which fanciers can join, who administers races, and how results are combined with other organisations.
Who can manage organisations
Editing the organisation structure is reserved for country administrators - the lead administrator of the federation in a given country. Club administrators and base-organisation administrators do not see this screen.
A country administrator can create, edit, and deactivate every organisation in the country, including base organisations, combines, the national organisation, sport clubs, and Smart Clubs. They also manage the clubs that sit underneath each base organisation.
Where to find it
There are two ways to reach the organisation administration screen.
From the public organisations list
Open the country results page and scroll to the bottom of the organisations list. The Organizations and clubs button at the bottom takes you straight to the administration screen.
From the admin panel
Open the admin panel and choose Organizations and clubs from the admin menu (fourth item from the top).
Adding vs. editing an organisation
The form on the right side of the screen has two modes. By default it is in create mode - filling in the fields and saving creates a brand-new organisation. To edit an existing one, pick it from the lists on the left; the form switches to edit mode and the header turns yellow. To go back to creating a new organisation, click Turn off edit mode in the top-right corner of the form.
Once an organisation is in edit mode, an additional panel appears below the form for managing its clubs. Clubs are sub-units of base organisations only - sport clubs, combines, the national organisation, and Smart Clubs do not have clubs underneath them.
Organisation form fields
The same form is used for every organisation type. Some fields show up in public listings, others are admin-only.
Code and name
Both are visible in the public organisations list. The code is also the primary sort key, so use a numbering scheme that matches how you want the organisations to appear (for example federation district numbers).
Category
Choose carefully - the category determines whether the organisation behaves as a base organisation, combine, national, sport club, or Smart Club, and cannot be changed after the organisation is saved. The dropdown is intentionally locked in edit mode. If a different model is needed later, create a new organisation and migrate the members.
Website
Optional. When filled in, it appears in the public organisations list as a clickable link to the organisation's own website.
Email and Description
Both fields are admin-only - they are not displayed anywhere in the public lists.
The email address is used by BENZING Live for private flights: when an organisation's club race is connected to a private flight, the address is added as a CC recipient to the basketing, temporary evaluation, and final result emails sent to participating fanciers. Leave it empty for organisations that should not receive these copies.
The description is a free-text note for internal reference - for example contact details for the organisation's board.
Is active
Inactive organisations are hidden from the public organisations list. Members of the public can re-enable them in their view by toggling Show inactive organisations at the bottom of the list. In the administration screen all organisations are always visible, with a red cross next to inactive ones and a green check next to active ones.
Allow remote evaluation
Controls whether the bulk race evaluation button appears in club races. When enabled, an administrator can launch the evaluation for several races at once instead of evaluating each one individually. Leave it off for organisations whose race plan should always be evaluated race-by-race.
Standard federation hierarchy
The traditional federation model used by the majority of countries. It is a four-level pyramid: clubs sit at the bottom, base organisations are formed from clubs, combines group multiple base organisations, and the national organisation sits at the top.
Races are typically organised at the base-organisation level. Combined results across multiple base organisations are then calculated at the combine and national levels.
Base organisations
A base organisation is the unit that physically organises races. It owns the race plan, the liberation site list, and the fancier database. In federation terminology this is often the regional or district organisation.
Members do not join the base organisation directly. They join one of its clubs and inherit base-organisation membership through that club.
How to choose what becomes a base organisation
When in doubt, the rule of thumb is simple: the base organisation is the level that owns the largest shared race plan. In practice this is the organisation that owns the transport vehicle and runs the full season schedule for the clubs underneath it. Anything narrower (a single club, a postal area within the district) belongs underneath as a club; anything wider (a region grouping several base organisations for combined results only) belongs above as a combine.
Partial results inside a base organisation
A base organisation always calculates its overall results across every member, but you often want partial standings as well - for a single club, for a "zone" (a custom group of clubs), or for a hand-picked set of fanciers. This is what types of results are for: each type defines who is included in that calculation.
A base organisation can run any number of types in parallel - the overall organisation type, one type per club, one per zone, or types that target individual fanciers. The same race plan and the same flights are reused for all of them; only the participant set changes.
See the Types of results guide for how to create and configure them. Types of Results .
Clubs
A club is a sub-unit of a base organisation. It is the entry point for fanciers - every fancier in the standard hierarchy is a member of exactly one club per season.
Clubs do not run their own races. They share the parent base organisation's race plan, results, and competitions. Club administrators manage their own members and can perform restricted operations on the parent organisation's data within the scope of their club.
Combines
A combine groups multiple base organisations together to calculate combined results across a wider area. Combines do not have direct members - participants are the members of the linked base organisations - and only some parts of the season plan are pooled at this level. Anything that is run as a single, fully shared race plan should stay one base organisation, not be split across a combine.
Combines own a race plan only at the level of combined races. Liberation time is always entered for the combine race itself - it is then propagated to the participating base-organisation races automatically.
No flights attached directly to combines or the national level
Arrivals and individual race flights cannot be entered directly under a combine or the national organisation. Both levels only aggregate the flights of the base organisations, sport clubs, and Smart Clubs that sit underneath them.
- BENZING Live private flights follow the same rule: they are always connected to a base organisation, sport club, or Smart Club - never directly to a combine or the national organisation.
Choosing which child organisations belong to the combine
Combines and the national organisation have an extra Combined Organizations screen in their settings (Settings → Combined Organizations on the public organisation page). The country administrator opens it and ticks which base organisations belong under this combine or national.
The choice has two effects:
- When combined results are calculated, the system knows which fanciers - based on their base-organisation membership - are eligible for the combined competition.
- The combined results show up in the calculated-results list of every linked base organisation as well, so the children inherit the combine's standings. A base organisation that is not linked into the combine does not see those results in its own calculated-results list.
National level
The national organisation sits at the top of the hierarchy and aggregates results from all base organisations and combines in the country. It is used for national championships and country-wide statistics.
Like combines, the national organisation does not hold members directly. National administrators have full visibility across all child organisations.
Special sport clubs
Sport clubs are a separate organisation type designed for specialised competition formats - for example breed-specific clubs, ace-pigeon clubs, or sport-only contests that operate outside the regular federation hierarchy.
Unlike base organisations, sport clubs do not have any clubs underneath them. Fanciers are members of the sport club directly, regardless of which base organisation they may also race in.
A fancier can be a member of a sport club in addition to their regular federation organisation. Sport-club results are calculated independently and do not affect the fancier's standing in their main base organisation.
Smart Club
Smart Club is a specialty organisation for owners of BENZING Live clocks. It is built around the live data feed coming from the Live system and offers features that are not available in the standard hierarchy.
Like sport clubs, Smart Clubs use direct membership - there are no clubs underneath them. Each fancier joins the Smart Club directly.
Direct membership
Smart Clubs do not have a club layer. Every fancier is a member of the Smart Club itself. This keeps the structure simple and matches the way Live data is reported - per fancier, not per club.
Live training sessions
Smart Clubs can host live training sessions in addition to regular races. Training data is captured from BENZING Live clocks and made available to members in real time, so fanciers can monitor their pigeons' performance during training tosses without waiting for an official race.
Private races
Races organised by a Smart Club can be marked as private. Private races and their results are visible only to members of the Smart Club - they are not listed in public race overviews. This is useful for closed competition formats or members-only events.
Community Loft
A Community Loft is a specialty organisation type for shared-loft competitions - effectively a mini one-loft race. It combines a dedicated administration screen for managing the loft's fanciers and pigeons with the live data feed from BENZING Live, similar to a Smart Club but with an extra ownership layer between the loft and the fanciers.
Direct membership and pigeon assignment
Like sport clubs and Smart Clubs, Community Lofts use direct membership - there are no clubs underneath them, and a fancier can be a member of one or more Community Lofts in parallel with their other organisations. Each season the Community Loft manager assigns pigeons to the participating fanciers; those pigeons then complete the trainings and races under the Community Loft.
How racing works
All pigeons in a Community Loft physically fly home to the same loft and are clocked through a single BENZING Live system on the manager's site. Because every pigeon shares the same liberation point and the same home location, the distance is identical for everyone - the competition between fanciers comes down purely to which of their assigned pigeons arrived earliest. Only fanciers who have pigeons assigned for the season participate in that season's standings.
