Zero Tolerance Is Easy to Say. Here's What It Takes to Mean It.

"We have a zero tolerance policy." I hear this sentence at least once a week from sport administrators. It is on websites, in strategic plans, in AGM speeches. It appears in constitutions and code-of-conduct documents across every level of sport, from local swimming clubs to national governing bodies.

And in most cases, it means nothing.

Not because the people saying it don't believe it. They do. The president of a regional cricket association who tells their clubs "we have zero tolerance for bullying" is usually completely sincere. The problem is not intent. The problem is that zero tolerance is a destination, and almost nobody has built the road to get there.

The statement is not the system

The Good Governance in Grassroots Sport project, led by ISCA and Transparency International Germany, was blunt about this. Their guidelines state that "the same applies to zero-tolerance towards inappropriate behaviour: Suspicions should be followed-up; any misbehaviour has to be addressed and sanctioned in an appropriate way. Otherwise the regulations will not be taken seriously."

Read that last sentence again. If you say zero tolerance and then do not follow through, you have not just failed to enforce the policy. You have actively taught everyone in the organisation that the words on the wall are decoration.

This is worse than having no policy at all. A club without a zero tolerance statement has a gap. A club with a zero tolerance statement it does not enforce has a lie. People learn from that. They learn that reporting is pointless. They learn that behaviour without consequences is tolerated, regardless of what the poster in the clubhouse says.

What we're tolerating

Transparency International defines corruption as "the misuse of entrusted power for personal gain." That definition is deliberately broad. We tend to picture corruption as envelopes of cash changing hands in a FIFA boardroom, and yes, that qualifies. But the definition covers behaviour much closer to home.

The committee member who steers the ground maintenance contract to a mate's company. That is corruption.

The coach who selects junior players based on which parents volunteer the most hours - or donate the most to the fundraiser. That is corruption.

The club president who suppresses financial information from the committee because "it would just worry people." That is corruption.

The treasurer who uses the club credit card for personal fuel because "I'm always driving to meetings anyway and I'll square it up later." That is corruption.

Sylvia Schenk of Transparency International Germany, who was central to the ISCA governance framework, argued that the culture of denial in grassroots sport is one of its greatest risks. Sport organisations do not think of themselves as places where corruption happens. Corruption happens at FIFA, at the IOC, in professional leagues with television contracts. Not at the Bundoora Junior Football Club.

But the definition does not care about scale. Misuse of entrusted power for personal gain. The committee member has entrusted power. Using it for personal gain - financial, social, political - is corruption. The scale is different. The structure is identical.

The implementation chain

The ISCA guidelines lay out what I think of as the zero tolerance implementation chain. Four links. Break any one and the policy fails.

Code. A written, specific statement of what zero tolerance means in your organisation. Not "we don't tolerate bad behaviour." What behaviour, specifically? Harassment - define it. Financial misconduct - define it. Discrimination - define it. Conflicts of interest - define them. If people cannot identify what is prohibited, they cannot report it when they see it.

Detection. How does the organisation find out when something happens? This requires channels. Whistleblowing mechanisms where someone can report a concern without fear of retaliation. Regular auditing of financial records. Transparent decision-making processes where irregularities are visible. If the only way a problem surfaces is when it becomes a crisis, you do not have detection. You have luck.

Investigation. When a concern is raised, who investigates? And critically: are they independent? You cannot investigate yourself. The committee cannot investigate a complaint against one of its own members without structural independence. In corporate governance, this is understood - audit committees exist precisely because management cannot audit management. In grassroots sport, the committee is management, the board, and often the people being complained about, all at once.

Sanction. When an investigation finds wrongdoing, what happens? Are there defined consequences? Are those consequences applied consistently? And is there documentation that proves they were applied? Without records, sanctions are arbitrary. A future committee can claim they didn't know. The person sanctioned can claim it never happened.

Four links. Code, Detection, Investigation, Sanction. Most sport organisations have the first one - a code of some kind, however vague. Some have detection mechanisms, usually informal. Very few have independent investigation processes. And almost none have documented sanctions with audit trails.

The political reality

Here is the part that governance frameworks rarely acknowledge directly, but that anyone who has been involved in grassroots sport knows in their bones.

The person you need to investigate is the person who coaches your kid's team.

Or the person who organised the fundraiser that saved the club last year. Or the person who has been president for twelve years and knows where everything is. Or the person whose family has been involved in the club since 1987.

In grassroots sport, everyone knows everyone. Social relationships, family connections, shared history - these create a web of obligations that makes zero tolerance enforcement politically excruciating. The committee member who raises a concern about the president's expenses is not just filing a governance complaint. They are potentially destroying a friendship, creating a faction within the club, and making every Saturday morning at the grounds uncomfortable for the next two years.

This is real. Pretending otherwise - pretending that good people will simply do the right thing because there's a code of conduct - is why zero tolerance stays on paper.

The ISCA guidelines acknowledge this when they discuss the need for external or independent investigation pathways. A club cannot be expected to investigate its own members with the rigour required for zero tolerance to mean something. State bodies and regional associations have a role here - providing independent complaint mechanisms, investigation support, and a layer of distance from the local politics.

But most state bodies are stretched thin themselves. Regional officers spend 40-60% of their time chasing clubs for basic compliance information. Adding investigation support to that workload is not realistic without better infrastructure.

Documentation is the mechanism

Every link in the implementation chain depends on records.

The code needs to be distributed, acknowledged, and that acknowledgement recorded. Not emailed and hoped for - actually tracked. Which committee members have read it? Which coaches have signed it? When?

Detection requires a channel that creates records. A verbal complaint at the bar after training is not detection. It is a conversation that may or may not have happened, depending on who you ask six months later.

Investigation requires process documentation. Who was notified? What evidence was gathered? Who was interviewed? What were the findings? These records are not bureaucracy for its own sake - they are the protection that makes the investigation defensible.

Sanctions require an audit trail. What was the finding? What was the penalty? Was it applied? Was it appealed? What was the outcome of the appeal? Without this trail, a new committee two years later has no idea what happened or why. They might reinstate someone who was removed for cause, simply because nobody told them.

And here is the cruel irony of volunteer turnover: 50% of clubs change key committee members annually. Average volunteer tenure is 2.1 years. The person who handled the investigation is probably gone by the time the sanction needs to be reviewed. If the documentation does not survive the handover, the zero tolerance policy did not survive the handover.

What this looks like in practice

TidyConnect was built, in part, to create the documentation layer that makes zero tolerance enforceable at scale. Not as a policing tool - as a records system.

Policy distribution with acknowledgement tracking means a governing body can demonstrate that every club received the code, and which individuals acknowledged it. That is the first link - Code - made verifiable.

Compliance dashboards that show which clubs have current safeguarding officers, up-to-date insurance, and completed training requirements create the visibility that makes Detection possible. When a safeguarding role is vacant for three months, it shows up. Not at the next quarterly board meeting - now.

Document sharing with version control means investigation records persist beyond any individual. The incoming committee inherits the full history, not a clean slate. Decision audit trails mean that sanctions are recorded, traceable, and available to whoever holds the role next.

None of this replaces the hard human work of actually confronting misconduct. No platform can make it comfortable to investigate the person who coaches your kid. But it can make it procedurally sound. It can ensure that the complaint is recorded, the process is documented, and the outcome is preserved.

The standard we accept

There is a line often attributed to various coaches and leaders: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. In governance, it is more precise than that.

The standard you fail to document is the standard that disappears.

Zero tolerance that exists only as a statement trains people to ignore statements. Zero tolerance that is backed by infrastructure - codes that are tracked, channels that are safe, investigations that are independent, sanctions that are recorded - trains people to take governance seriously.

Sport England and UK Sport both require funded bodies to demonstrate governance capability, not just governance intent. The question is no longer "do you have a policy?" It is "can you show us it works?"

Most grassroots sport organisations cannot answer that second question. Not because they don't care. Because they don't have the records.

Building those records - making zero tolerance an operational reality rather than a rhetorical position - is not glamorous work. It will not make the highlight reel at the annual awards dinner. But it is the difference between an organisation that means what it says and one that just says it.

References

• ISCA & Transparency International Germany. Guidelines for Good Governance in Grassroots Sport (PDF). Zero-Tolerance.
• Transparency International. Global Corruption Report: Sport. 2016.
• UNODC. UN Convention against Corruption.
• UK Government. Bribery Act 2010.
• CAS. Court of Arbitration for Sport.
• SIGA. Sport Integrity Global Alliance.
• Sport Integrity Australia. Sport Integrity Australia.