Case Study
76 clubs. 11 staff. One platform.
How the Perth Football League uses TidyConnect to manage compliance, communication, and governance across one of Australia's largest community football leagues.
The challenge
The Perth Football League is approaching its centenary. It's one of the largest community football leagues in Australia — 76 clubs, 45 women's teams, and a small staff team of 11 trying to keep it all running.
Before TidyConnect, communicating with clubs meant email. Important deadlines sat in the same inbox as social invitations. Compliance documents were chased by individual staff members, tracked in spreadsheets, and lost when people changed roles. There was no single source of truth for what had been sent, who had seen it, or whether anyone had actioned it.
The staff knew the problem. They also knew that any platform they rolled out had to work for the volunteer at the other end — the club secretary checking their phone at 9pm on a Tuesday, not an IT department with dedicated training time.
“There's no clubs in Australia that don't have people that can do this stuff. It's just a matter of finding them and accessing their skills.”
The approach
PFL formed a three-person working group representing different parts of the business — club services, administration, and operations. They tested the platform with a single club before rolling out to all 76.
The key decision: keep it simple. After consulting with clubs, PFL chose to use fewer, larger projects rather than many small ones. Their Season 2024 “All PFL Club Tasks” project contained about 50 tasks — every significant deadline, compliance requirement, and action item for the year in one place.
Each club also got its own project for club-specific communications — fines, individual follow-ups, anything that only affected that club. Women's clubs got a dedicated project for women's-specific tasks. The result: clubs had four or five projects to manage. PFL staff managed 70+ behind the scenes.
The full staff was trained before going live. That was non-negotiable. “If it's important, it needs to be in TidyHQ. It can't not be in TidyHQ.” That consistency was the foundation — if some communications went through the platform and others didn't, clubs would revert to email and the whole thing would unravel.
The rollout
Onboarding
Two training sessions with Natalie. Internal working group of 3 staff established. Full staff trained before going live.
Testing
Partnered with one club (president worked in the same office) to test the platform end-to-end and shape the rollout strategy.
Launch
Rolled out to all 76 clubs three weeks before Round 1. Weekly email digest introduced to surface new tasks and deadlines.
Mid-season
July CEO check-in via a simple 1–5 rating task. 75% of clubs responded. Identified struggling clubs early and provided direct support.
End of season
50-question end-of-season survey. 76% rated the platform above-average or excellent. Strongest detractors at launch became some of the strongest advocates.
What PFL discovered
Thursday morning is the best time to send tasks
Not Friday. Clubs are at training on Thursday and use Monday evenings after 7pm to catch up on admin. PFL adjusted their send schedule based on completion data.
50 tasks in one project — by design
Against conventional wisdom, PFL put all season tasks into a single "All Clubs" project. Clubs preferred fewer projects with more content over many small ones. Easier to find and refer back to.
Every club has two champions
One club panicked about the platform. Five people joined a training call. Three struggled. Two were excellent. Those two now run the club's entire admin on TidyHQ.
Mid-season check-in changed the game
A simple task asking clubs to rate PFL service 1–5 surfaced problems they didn't know existed. Some clubs that seemed fine were struggling quietly.
“We're really excited about the library that sits there now. Clubs can go back and see what was required in April, who was doing it, and whether it was hard or just a tick-box task.”
The results
By end of season, 76% of clubs rated the platform above-average or excellent. The mid-season CEO check-in showed satisfaction ratings of 3+ from nearly 98% of responding clubs — a number that improved through the season as clubs became more familiar with the system.
Some of PFL's strongest early critics became their strongest advocates. One club that was vocally opposed at launch ended the season asking why certain communications weren't coming through TidyConnect instead of email.
The platform created a permanent institutional record. For the first time, incoming committee members could see exactly what tasks were required the previous April, who completed them, and when. The annual handover problem — where knowledge walks out the door with the departing volunteer — started to shrink.
PFL also used the reporting data to discover patterns: Thursday mornings get the best task completion rates. Monday evenings after 7pm are when volunteers catch up on admin. These insights shaped how PFL communicated with clubs for the rest of the season.
In February 2025, PFL was nominated for Organisation of the Year at Sports West — in part because of their investment in governance technology.
What's next
For Season 2025, PFL is expanding beyond league-mandated tasks. The goal: get clubs using TidyHQ for their own committee meetings, internal task management, and communications — not just because PFL requires it, but because it makes running a football club easier.
They're also piloting TidyConnect's announcements feature to replace email for non-critical communications, reducing notification fatigue while maintaining a searchable record of everything sent. The vision: clubs can run their entire administration from their phone.
As Mark Sanders puts it: “We're one year down, but we'll still evolve. We respond to our clubs and work out what's best for them. We can't do anything without engaging clubs to make it work.”
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