A Club Development Framework for Australian Sports Clubs

It usually happens about forty minutes into a committee meeting. Someone - often the newest member, the one who hasn't yet learned to keep quiet - asks a version of the question that nobody wants to answer. "How do we know if we're actually doing well?"

The room goes silent. The president looks at the treasurer. The treasurer says memberships are up from last year. The secretary points out they finally got the website updated. Someone mentions the new defibrillator. And the conversation moves on to the canteen roster because at least that has a definitive answer.

But the question hangs there. Are we a good club? Compared to what? Measured how? Nobody knows, because there's no framework for knowing. There's no benchmark, no checklist, no structured way of saying "here's where we are, here's where we need to be, and here's the gap between the two."

That's what a club development framework gives you. And most Australian sports clubs don't have one.

What is a club development framework (and why your committee needs one)

A club development framework is a self-assessment tool. That's it. It gives your committee a structured way to look at every part of your club - governance, finances, people, facilities, programmes, community engagement - and honestly rate where you stand on a scale from "barely functioning" to "genuinely excellent."

It's not a strategic plan, though it feeds directly into one. It's not a compliance checklist, though it will help you meet compliance requirements. Think of it as the diagnostic that happens before the treatment. You wouldn't let a physio start manipulating your knee without an assessment first. But that's exactly how most clubs approach improvement - fixing whatever hurts loudest this week without ever stepping back to understand the full picture.

Why does this matter now? Three reasons.

First, ad-hoc decision-making is killing volunteer energy. When there's no plan, everything is urgent and nothing is prioritised. The committee lurches from one crisis to the next - the leaking roof, the unpaid insurance, the coach who quit - and nobody has the headspace to work on things that would actually prevent crises. A framework gives you permission to say "we're not doing that this year because these three things matter more."

Second, grant applications have changed. State sporting bodies and local councils increasingly ask for evidence of strategic planning. "What's your club development plan?" is no longer a nice-to-have question on the form - it's a gatekeeper. If you can't articulate where your club is heading and why you need funding to get there, you're losing money to clubs that can.

Third, there's now a genuinely good framework to work from. Geoff Wilson, who runs a global sports strategy consultancy and has worked with organisations across more than 100 countries, published his Club Development Framework as part of his book Leading a Grassroots Sports Club (we wrote a full review here). It's a five-stage model that takes the question "are we a good club?" and turns it into something you can actually answer. Australian Sports Commission has its own club development resources too, and many state sporting bodies have adapted these into sport-specific versions. But Wilson's framework is the clearest starting point we've seen.

The five stages of club development

Wilson's framework maps clubs into five stages. The names are straightforward and the descriptions are deliberately specific - this isn't abstract theory, it's meant to trigger recognition. You should be able to read these and say "that's us" within thirty seconds.

Emerging

This is the new club, or the old club in crisis. Maybe it was founded two years ago by a group of parents who wanted a netball team for their kids. Maybe it's been around for decades but just lost its entire committee in a single AGM walkout (it happens more often than people admit).

The hallmarks: no constitution, or one that nobody can find. Meetings happen irregularly, if at all. One person - usually the founder or the last president standing - does everything. The finances run through someone's personal bank account. Communication is a group chat that mixes admin with banter with complaints about the umpires.

If your club runs on the goodwill of a single person and would collapse if they moved to Queensland, you're Emerging.

Developing

Basic structures exist, but they're fragile. The club has a constitution - it was written when they incorporated back in 2015, and nobody's read it since. There's a committee, but the same three people make all the decisions while everyone else sits on their phones during meetings. Actions get minuted but not followed up. The treasurer does the books but presents them once a year at the AGM in a format nobody understands.

This is actually the most common stage for Australian sports clubs. And it's the most dangerous - because it feels like everything is fine until it isn't. The club functions well enough on autopilot until someone resigns, or the council asks for a copy of your risk management plan, or a parent makes a formal complaint and nobody knows the grievance procedure.

Established

Solid foundations. This is the club that has its act together - regular committee meetings with proper minutes, financial reporting every quarter (not just at the AGM), policies in place for safeguarding, codes of conduct, and member grievances. Membership numbers are stable or growing. There's a social media presence that someone actually maintains. The volunteers aren't happy exactly, but they're not on the verge of quitting either.

Most well-run suburban clubs sit here. It's a good place to be. But it's also where many clubs plateau, because the jump from Established to Advanced requires a different kind of thinking - not just doing things properly, but doing them strategically.

Advanced

This is where clubs start to separate from the pack. Advanced clubs have succession planning - they're not panicking every November about who'll be president next year. They have diverse revenue streams beyond membership fees: sponsorships, grants, facility hire, fundraising events. They've built community partnerships with schools, councils, and other clubs. Their coaches are accredited and developing. They run programmes that bring in new participants, not just retain existing ones.

You know these clubs. They're the ones other clubs look at and think "how do they do it all?" The answer is almost always the same: they planned. They didn't just react. (And usually, they have a committee of eight to twelve people who actually share the load, rather than three martyrs and seven passengers.)

High-performing

Everything above, plus genuine innovation. Data-driven decisions - not just gut feel, but actual numbers on retention, participation trends, revenue per member. The club mentors other clubs in its association. It partners with its state sporting body on pilot programmes. It's thinking about the next five years, not just the next season.

Here's a mildly unpopular opinion: the highest-performing community sports clubs in Australia are almost never the ones with the most money or the biggest facilities. They're the ones with the best governance. I've seen wealthy clubs with brand-new synthetic pitches and floodlights that are complete organisational disasters, and I've seen netball clubs operating out of a church hall that run like clockwork. The framework doesn't care about your budget. It cares about your systems.

How to assess where your club actually is

The honest version of this conversation is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to sit in a committee meeting and admit that the club they've poured years into is, by any objective measure, still Developing. But that discomfort is exactly why the assessment matters - because the alternative is continuing to assume you're further ahead than you are.

Here's a simple self-assessment you can run at your next committee meeting. Go through each area and answer honestly. Not aspirationally. Not "we're working on that." Where you actually are, right now.

Governance

• Do you have an up-to-date constitution that your committee has reviewed in the last two years?
• Do you hold committee meetings at least monthly with written minutes?
• Are committee actions tracked and followed up between meetings?
• Do you have documented policies for safeguarding, codes of conduct, and grievance handling?
• Do your members know how to raise a concern or make a formal complaint?
• Does your committee have defined roles with written position descriptions?

People

• Do you have a succession plan for key roles (president, treasurer, secretary)?
• Do you actively recruit new volunteers - or just hope they appear?
• Do your coaches hold current accreditations?
• Do you run any form of volunteer recognition or appreciation?
• Is the workload spread across the committee, or do two or three people carry everything?

Finances

• Does your treasurer present financial reports to the committee at every meeting?
• Do you have more than one revenue stream beyond membership fees?
• Do you have a budget for the year - not just a bank balance?
• Have you applied for a grant in the last two years?
• Are your financial records in a state that could survive an audit?
• Is your club's ABN, insurance, and incorporation all current?

Facilities

• Do you have a written agreement with whoever owns your facility (council, school, landlord)?
• Is there a maintenance schedule for your grounds and equipment?
• Are your facilities accessible and welcoming to new members?
• Do you share facilities with other organisations, and if so, is that relationship documented?

Programmes and community

• Do you run programmes specifically designed to attract new participants?
• Do you have a relationship with local schools?
• Do you engage with your state sporting body's development programmes?
• Do you have any community partnerships (council, sponsors, local businesses)?
• Do you collect feedback from your members at least once a year?

If you answered yes to most questions in every category, you're Established or above. If you have significant gaps in two or more areas, you're likely Developing - regardless of how long the club has been around. Longevity is not the same as maturity. A club that's been running for forty years with the same problems it had in year five hasn't developed. It's just persisted.

Building your development plan

Right. You've done the assessment. You know where the gaps are. Now what?

The biggest mistake clubs make at this point is trying to fix everything at once. A committee of volunteers who meet once a month cannot execute a fifteen-point improvement plan. They can execute three things. Maybe four if they're ambitious and the treasurer doesn't have a holiday planned.

Pick three priorities. Look at your self-assessment and identify the three gaps that would make the biggest difference if closed. Not the easiest to fix - the most impactful. If you don't have a safeguarding policy and your coaches aren't accredited, those come first regardless of how much you'd rather focus on the new team shirts.

Assign an owner. Not the president for everything. Not the secretary for everything. Each priority gets one person who is responsible for driving it forward. They don't have to do all the work themselves - but they do have to make sure it progresses between meetings and report back to the committee.

Set realistic timeframes. Here's the thing about volunteer-run organisations that people keep forgetting: nothing takes less than three months. Writing a safeguarding policy takes three months because the person doing it has a full-time job, two kids, and coaches on Saturdays. Building a sponsorship prospectus takes three months because it requires input from five people who are never all available in the same week. Plan accordingly. A twelve-month plan with four priorities is far better than a three-month plan with twelve.

Align with your state sporting body. This is the part most clubs skip, and it costs them. Football Australia, Cricket Australia, Netball Australia, AFL, Hockey Australia - most national and state sporting bodies have their own club development frameworks or accreditation programmes. They go by different names (ClubConnect, Club Framework, MyClub, Good Sports), but they're all variations on the same idea. And here's why alignment matters: when you apply for grants, development funding, or facility upgrades through your state body, they will look at whether your club's priorities match theirs. If your development plan speaks the same language as their framework, you are in a materially stronger position. It's not gaming the system - it's showing that you're heading in the same direction.

One more thing. Write the plan down. Not in someone's head. Not in the minutes from the meeting where you discussed it. A separate, accessible document that the whole committee can refer back to. One page is enough. Priorities, owners, timeframes, measures of success. That's your club development plan.

How TidyHQ helps

If you're sitting down to do this assessment, you'll need data - and "I think" isn't data. How many financial members do you actually have? What's your retention rate year on year? When did your committee last update the constitution? Where is your safeguarding policy saved? TidyHQ gives you the membership data to answer these questions without spending a weekend digging through spreadsheets and email threads. Your member register, financial records, and contact history are already there.

And once you've built your development plan, it needs to live somewhere the whole committee can access it - not in the president's email drafts. TidyHQ's document storage means your plan, your policies, and your progress reports stay with the club, not with the individual volunteer. When someone rotates off the committee next year (and they will), the incoming person picks up where they left off instead of starting from scratch.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a club development framework?

It's a structured self-assessment tool that helps a sports club evaluate where it sits across key areas - governance, people, finances, facilities, and programmes - and identify what needs to happen to reach the next stage. Think of it as a diagnostic that turns "are we doing okay?" into a specific, actionable answer.

How long does it take to create a club development plan?

The self-assessment itself takes about 90 minutes at a committee meeting. Building the plan from those results - picking priorities, assigning owners, setting timeframes - takes another meeting or two. You can have a working plan within a month. Don't let perfect be the enemy of done here; a rough plan that exists beats a polished plan that doesn't.

Do I need a club development framework for a small club?

Yes - arguably more than a large club. Small clubs are more vulnerable to the single-point-of-failure problem (one person leaves and the whole thing falls over). A framework helps you identify those vulnerabilities before they become a crisis. And it takes less time for a small club, because there's less to assess.

Back to that committee meeting. Someone asks "are we a good club?" and this time, nobody needs to guess. You pull out the one-page assessment you did last quarter. You're Developing in governance, Established in programmes, and still Emerging on financial diversification. You know exactly what you're working on this year and who's responsible for each piece. The conversation doesn't stall - it moves forward.

That's what a framework does. Not magic. Just clarity.

References

• Australian Sports Commission - National sports policy, participation data, and club development resources
• Geoff Wilson - Author and researcher on grassroots sports club leadership and planning
• Sport Integrity Australia - Governance standards and integrity frameworks for Australian sport
• Harvard Business Review - Strategic planning research and organisational development frameworks
• Play by the Rules - Safe, fair, and inclusive sport resources for Australian clubs