--- title: "Stakeholder Democracy in Sport: Your Members Deserve More Than an AGM" url: https://tidyhq.com/blog/stakeholder-democracy-sport-beyond-agm date: 2026-07-19 updated: 2026-07-12 author: "Isaak Dury" categories: ["Governance", "Club Operations"] excerpt: "An AGM once a year is not democracy. Real participation means members can access information, shape decisions, and see the results." --- # Stakeholder Democracy in Sport: Your Members Deserve More Than an AGM > An AGM once a year is not democracy. Real participation means members can access information, shape decisions, and see the results. ![First Theme by Burgoyne Diller, illustrating Stakeholder Democracy in Sport: Your Members Deserve More Than an AGM](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/bp0k7h82/production/51a476f91e7a323cca6d435f8da00adae88322fe-648x648.jpg?w=1200&fm=webp) ## Key takeaways - An AGM satisfies a legal requirement but does not, on its own, constitute meaningful member participation in governance - Stakeholders are not just financial members - sponsors, municipalities, parents, coaches, and local neighbours all have legitimate interests in how a club operates - The skill of participatory governance is knowing which stakeholders need what kind of involvement in which decisions - Young members should be invited to shape the organisation's direction, not just participate in its activities - Real participation requires infrastructure: written invitations, agendas, accessible minutes, progress reports, and channels that work between meetings Last year I attended an AGM at a community netball club\. Sixty\-two financial members\. Eleven showed up\. The president read a report\. The treasurer read a report\. Both were approved without discussion\. Two committee positions were filled uncontested\. The meeting lasted 34 minutes\. Technically, democracy happened\. The constitution requires an AGM\. The AGM was held\. Positions were filled\. Reports were approved\. Box ticked\. But nobody in that room \- including the president \- would call it participation\. ## The gap between statute and substance The [ISCA](https://www.isca-web.org/) and Transparency International Germany's [Good Governance in Grassroots Sport project](https://goodgovsport.eu/) puts this bluntly: "just to have membership rights in the statutes does not suffice\." A constitution that grants members the right to vote at an AGM has established the legal minimum\. It has not created participation\. Participation means members can access information about how the organisation is run\. It means they have channels to influence strategy, not just elect officers\. It means they see evidence that their input affected outcomes \- or an honest explanation of why it didn't\. Mihai Androhovic of the Romanian Sport for All Association, who contributed to the ISCA project, offered a definition I keep coming back to: "Good Governance can be defined as the complex of all actions taken by members\." Not by the committee\. Not by the board\. By members\. Governance isn't something done to a membership\. It's something a membership does\. That's a high bar\. Most clubs aren't close\. ## Who are the stakeholders? This is where clubs consistently think too narrowly\. When we say "member participation," we mean financial members \- the people who've paid their fees and appear in the membership register\. They're the most obvious stakeholders, and the ones with constitutional voting rights\. But they're not the only people with a legitimate interest in how the club is run\. **Parents and guardians\.** If your club serves juniors, parents are stakeholders\. They've entrusted their children to your organisation\. They have a direct interest in safeguarding policies, coaching standards, and how complaints are handled\. Most clubs communicate with parents only about logistics \- game times, uniform orders, season fees\. Very few involve parents in governance conversations\. **Coaches and officials\.** Paid or volunteer, they deliver the product\. They see operational problems that the committee never hears about\. They interact with members more frequently than any committee member does\. Their perspective on what's working and what isn't is invaluable \- and almost never systematically sought\. **Sponsors and donors\.** They've invested money\. They have a right to understand how it's being used\. Not a right to direct strategy, but a right to transparency and accountability\. A sponsor who finds out from the local paper that the club is in financial trouble has been failed by the organisation's communication\. **Local government and municipalities\.** Patrick McGrattan of Belfast City Council, who contributed to the ISCA governance project, made an observation that reframed how I think about this: when assessing governance quality, you should look at the sum total of all roles in the organisation, not the effectiveness of individuals\. The municipality that provides your venue, your funding, or your planning approval is a stakeholder\. Their interest is in whether the organisation is well\-governed, stable, and fulfilling its community function\. **Neighbours\.** Yes, literally\. The people who live near your club grounds\. If your Saturday fixtures generate traffic, noise, or parking problems, those neighbours have a stake in your operations\. Ignoring them isn't just poor community relations \- it's a governance failure\. Not all of these stakeholders need the same kind of involvement\. A sponsor doesn't need to vote at your AGM\. A neighbour doesn't need to see your financial statements\. The skill of participatory governance \- and it is a skill \- is knowing which stakeholders need what kind of involvement in which decisions\. ## Why the AGM isn't enough An AGM happens once a year\. Governance happens every week\. Between AGMs, the committee makes dozens of decisions: budget allocations, policy changes, vendor contracts, event scheduling, responses to complaints\. Members \- the people the committee serves \- have no visibility into these decisions until the next AGM, when a summary is read aloud and approved in a block\. The ISCA guidelines identify the specific components that make participation real\. Written invitations with sufficient notice\. Agendas distributed in advance so people can prepare\. Rules of procedure so the meeting runs fairly\. Minutes distributed afterward\. Follow\-up reports that show which decisions were implemented and which weren't\. How many clubs do all of that? In my experience: almost none\. Most clubs send an email reminder the week before the AGM\. Some post on Facebook\. Agendas are written on the day\. Minutes, if taken, go into a folder that nobody accesses until next year's AGM prep\. And that's just the AGM\. The idea that members might have structured input between AGMs \- through surveys, open forums, feedback channels, or working groups \- barely registers as a possibility\. ## The young member problem Here's a demographic reality that most clubs haven't confronted: young adults are the least likely to attend an AGM and the most likely to have opinions about how the organisation should evolve\. The ISCA guidelines specifically call out the importance of inviting young members to shape the organisation, not just participate in its activities\. A 22\-year\-old who plays social basketball every Thursday night has ideas about what the club could be\. They're probably not going to share those ideas at a Tuesday evening AGM in the clubhouse\. But they'll engage through a survey\. They'll respond to a poll\. They'll participate in a discussion thread if one exists\. Toni Llop of UBAE in Barcelona, who sat on the ISCA Executive Committee, worked on engagement models across Spanish sport organisations\. The consistent finding: younger members engage differently, not less\. They expect digital channels\. They expect responsiveness\. They expect to see that input led to action \- or they disengage permanently\. A club that relies solely on the AGM for member participation is systematically excluding its youngest and most digitally fluent members from governance\. That's not a communication problem\. That's a structural one\. ## What participation actually looks like Dorte With of DGI in Denmark, one of the contributors to the Good Governance project, worked on practical models for member engagement in Danish sport organisations\. The principles are transferable\. **Regular information flow\.** Members should know what the committee is doing\. Not every detail \- but the significant decisions, the rationale behind them, and the outcomes\. This doesn't require a newsletter\. It requires a channel that members actually use, with updates that are concise and relevant\. **Structured feedback mechanisms\.** Not "our door is always open" \- that's an invitation that nobody accepts\. Structured means: a survey before the strategic plan\. A feedback form after the season\. A members' forum with a specific agenda item\. Something with a format, a deadline, and a commitment to read and respond to what comes back\. **Transparent decision records\.** Committee minutes should be accessible to members\. Not necessarily in full \- some items are legitimately confidential\. But the decisions, the reasoning, and the outcomes should be available to anyone who wants to look\. If members can't see how decisions are made, participation is theatre\. **Progress reporting\.** If the AGM approved a strategic plan, members should see progress against it\. Not once a year at the next AGM\. Quarterly, at minimum\. "We said we'd do X\. Here's where we're at\. Here's what changed and why\." Accountability isn't a burden\. It's a signal that the organisation takes its own decisions seriously\. **Invitation to contribute\.** Governance committees often treat member involvement as a risk \- what if someone raises something difficult? What if the meeting runs long? But Loïc Alves of Sport and Citizenship in France, who contributed to the ISCA project's work on stakeholder engagement, makes the case that member involvement is protective, not threatening\. An organisation where members feel heard is an organisation where problems are surfaced early\. An organisation where members feel shut out is one where problems fester until they explode at an AGM\. ## The infrastructure question Every principle above requires a channel\. Information flow requires a communication system\. Feedback requires a collection mechanism\. Transparency requires accessible records\. Progress reporting requires a regular cadence and a place to publish\. Most clubs default to email for all of this\. Some use Facebook groups\. A few have websites with a members' area that nobody logs into\. The problem with email is that it's one\-directional and undifferentiated\. A governance update and a fixture change arrive in the same inbox, from the same sender, in the same format\. Members can't choose what they want to hear about\. The committee can't tell who's engaged and who's tuned out\. The problem with Facebook groups is that they're noisy, ungovernable, and ephemeral\. Try finding the committee's decision about last year's fee increase in a Facebook group with 400 members posting about lost drink bottles and parking\. What participation needs is role\-based communication\. The safeguarding officer at your club gets safeguarding updates from the governing body\. The treasurer gets financial compliance deadlines\. Parents of junior members get information about junior programs and child safety policies\. Coaches get coaching accreditation and development updates\. General members get strategic updates and invitations to contribute\. [TidyConnect](/connect) was built for exactly this\. It gives governing bodies and clubs role\-based communication channels that route the right information to the right stakeholders without flooding everyone with everything\. When a governing body publishes a safeguarding update, it reaches every safeguarding officer across the network \- automatically, without someone maintaining an email list from last year's annual returns\. But the technology is the plumbing, not the house\. A role\-based communication system is only useful if the organisation decides that participation matters and commits to using the channels\. ## The democratic test Here's a simple audit for any sport organisation\. Answer honestly\. Can a member access the committee's meeting minutes from the last six months? Can a parent of a junior member find the club's current safeguarding policy? Can a sponsor see a report on how their funding was used? Does the club survey members before making decisions that affect them? Do members receive structured updates on progress against the strategic plan? Do young members have a digital channel for input that doesn't require attending a weeknight meeting? If the answer to most of these is no, the organisation's democracy begins and ends at the AGM\. And an AGM with 11 people out of 62 isn't democracy\. It's a quorum\. The ISCA guidelines, the European Commission's [White Paper on Sport](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52007DC0391), and increasingly the funding bodies that sustain grassroots sport all point in the same direction: participation isn't optional\. It's foundational\. Not because it's idealistic, but because organisations that don't involve their stakeholders make worse decisions, respond slower to problems, and lose the people they exist to serve\. Your members deserve more than 34 minutes once a year\. Give them a reason to care, a channel to speak, and evidence that it mattered\. That's what democracy looks like between AGMs\. ## References - ISCA & Transparency International Germany\. [Guidelines for Good Governance in Grassroots Sport](https://www.isca-web.org/files/GGGS_Web/Guidelines_for_Good_Governance_in_Grassroots_Sport.pdf) \(PDF\)\. Chapter 8: Participation and Inclusion\. - Council of Europe\. [Revised European Sports Charter](https://rm.coe.int/revised-european-sports-charter-web-a6/1680a7534b)\. CM/Rec\(2021\)5\. - Sport England & UK Sport\. [A Code for Sports Governance](https://www.sportengland.org/funding-and-campaigns/code-sports-governance)\. - NCVO\. [Governance Guidance](https://www.ncvo.org.uk/help-and-guidance/governance/)\. Stakeholder engagement\. - European Commission\. [White Paper on Sport](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52007DC0391)\. COM\(2007\) 391\. - ACNC\. [Governance Hub](https://www.acnc.gov.au/for-charities/manage-your-charity/governance-hub)\. Australian governance standards\. --- Header image: *First Theme* by Burgoyne Diller, via [WikiArt](https://www.wikiart.org/en/burgoyne-diller) --- Canonical: https://tidyhq.com/blog/stakeholder-democracy-sport-beyond-agm | Retrieved from: https://tidyhq.com/blog/stakeholder-democracy-sport-beyond-agm.md | Published by TidyHQ (https://tidyhq.com)