Grow Your Club – Guides 

Successful leadership and management of the modern sports club require delivery against sporting and social objectives while ensuring the financial sustainability of the organisation. Leaders and managers need a distinct set of skills to thrive in this context where clubs are operating in a competitive and changing environment.

Very few clubs do not have a programme which supports coaches who want to develop new skills. That is not the case with the volunteers who are involved with the actual development and running of the club. Very few clubs actively look at how they can improve their leadership and management and, say, develop more efficient decision making (just look at the time it often takes to make even the simplest decisions in clubs).

Hopefully, this guide can help you to improve the leadership and management at your club. This is not an exact science and each club and environment is different, so you will have to adapt the advice given here to your specific situation. .

 Community sports clubs can play a significant role in people’s lives and provide great football and consumer experiences for all; talented or not, player or parent or casual or dedicated.

In order to attract more players community sports clubs must become more welcoming and focused on the players and their welfare and ensure they are having fun and feel engaged. They must listen to people lives, communicate with them on their terms and in their language and ensure that they are more than just a sports club.

We have been studying best practice across sports clubs across the UK and in many sports and we have found some, often simple, ways to get more people to play sport, in this case, football.

This guide will give you some thoughts, tools and to-dos on how to attract and retain more players of all ages, shapes and talent .

The notion that a community sports club is indeed an enterprise which has to attract, serve and retain customers and make a surplus whilst fulfilling its sporting and community objectives is something that many clubs will need help to embrace. Sports clubs must develop a sustainable income model – getting away from the panicky Dash for Cash often running around literally begging for money.

The key is to look at the whole operation and ambition of your club and then identify and implement projects which can help grow your income to match your requirements, including generating cash reserves for replacements and developments. The creativity and commercial awareness of a number of community sports clubs who are ensuring their sustainability will be shared.

This guide will give you plenty of thoughts, tools and to-dos on how you can develop better income generating strategies and initiatives that are right for your club. In your environment, with your skills and contacts and aligned with your mission. It will help you move from a fundraising culture to one of income generation where you provide real benefits that people will pay for and has value to your customers (members, guests, supporters, sponsors)…

Dozens and dozens of proven ideas on how to generate income and concrete advice on how to implement the most appropriate ones.

 For community football clubs who train and play at several pitches and at varying times, it can often be difficult to develop and maintain a real club spirit and ethos.

If the u-8s coaches rarely engage with their u-11 colleagues and the various age groups use a variety of communications platforms and the Facebook page and website is only updated by a handful of people and there is no club newsletter and so on…yes, then it is almost impossible to develop a real feeling of ‘one club’.

But, we also appreciate that as a volunteer, you have limited time and resource to dedicate to all this communication stuff, however important it may be. The guide cover how to analyse the current content and channels of your internal communication, which channels to use for what purpose, what content to put on the various platforms and how to streamline the way you manage your internal comms..

 Great sports clubs work for and with their communities, and as a consequence, both parties benefit. They are in reality Hubs for their Communities. They link up their assets, skills and relationships with people, groups and institutions in their communities. They create Shared Value – a new kind of partnership, in which both the club and the community contribute directly to the strengthening and development of each other.

This guide will help you to become well connected to your community and find a common purpose between your partners and yourself. You will be given advice on the best ways to work together, benefitting both parties and on how to make it easier to understand each other and benefit from doing so. It will also cover how you can best assess your potential for working with community partners – what are your assets, relationships and skills?

Readers will be introduced to the 12 Steps for Creating Shared Value, which they then can implement straight away.

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Open Days and Community Launches can be great ways of bringing new people to your club and engaging with the community around you.

An Open Day can be a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with your community, attract new people to your club and provide existing members with another, great experience.

A well-run Community Launch is a great way to showcase your club to partners, funders, stakeholders and others with a wider interest in your club and its work in the community

Both types of events need both planning and creativity if they are to be successful. Unfortunately, we have experienced clubs where little thought went into their Open Days and they end up being boring and not particularly useful.

This guide will provide you with real-life advice and ideas on how to run vibrant and visible Open Days and Community Launches which will raise the profile of your club and get more people and partners to appreciate the work you are doing.