Good Governance for Community Organisations: A Practical Guide

What Governance Actually Means

Governance is one of those words that makes people's eyes glaze over. It sounds like it belongs in a boardroom, not at a Tuesday night committee meeting in the back of a clubhouse. But strip away the jargon and governance is just the answer to three questions: How does this organisation make decisions? Who is accountable for what? And can the members see what's going on?

That's it. Everything else - the constitution, the policies, the meeting procedures, the financial reports - exists to answer those three questions clearly enough that people can trust the answer.

The reason governance matters in community organisations is not because regulators demand it (though some do). It matters because volunteers give their time, members pay their fees, and sponsors hand over money on the basis that someone competent is minding the shop. When that trust breaks down - when a treasurer goes quiet about the finances, or a president makes decisions without consulting the committee, or nobody can explain why a particular contractor keeps getting the work - the organisation doesn't just have a governance problem. It has a survival problem.

Sport Australia's Sport Governance Principles put it this way: governance is the system by which organisations are directed, controlled, and held accountable. Sport New Zealand's Nine Steps to Effective Governance uses similar language. The AICD Not-for-Profit Governance Principles (3rd edition, 2024) frames it as the framework of rules, relationships, systems, and processes within and by which authority is exercised and controlled. The UK's Charity Governance Code (updated 2025) emphasises the board's role in setting strategic direction and ensuring the charity fulfils its purposes.

Different frameworks, same idea. Governance is how the thing runs. Not just how it complies.

The distinction matters because compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. You can tick every box on a compliance checklist and still have a dysfunctional committee that makes poor decisions, excludes members from meaningful participation, and treats the organisation's money as the president's discretionary fund. Compliance tells you whether the paperwork is in order. Governance tells you whether the organisation is actually being run well.

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The Four Pillars: Accountability, Transparency, Democracy, Stewardship

Most governance frameworks circle around the same core principles, arranged slightly differently depending on who wrote them. For community organisations, four pillars cover it.

Accountability

Every person with authority in the organisation - committee members, sub-committee chairs, paid staff, coaches, team managers - should know what they're accountable for, to whom, and how that accountability is exercised. The committee is collectively accountable to the members. Individual office bearers are accountable to the committee. Paid staff are accountable to whoever the committee has delegated management authority to.

The practical test is simple: if something goes wrong in a particular area, does everyone know whose responsibility it is? If the answer is "sort of" or "it depends," accountability isn't clear enough. Role descriptions help. Delegations of authority help more. But the real mechanism is regular reporting - if the treasurer reports to the committee monthly and the committee reports to members at the AGM, the accountability chain has regular checkpoints.

Transparency

Transparency means members can see how decisions are made and how money is spent. Not that every detail of every discussion is public - committee deliberations often need to be confidential, particularly around personnel, legal matters, or commercial negotiations. But the outcomes of decisions, the reasoning behind significant choices, and the organisation's financial position should be visible to anyone with a legitimate interest.

The ACNC Governance Standards (Standard 5) require charities to not misuse their position and to report financial information. For incorporated associations, state legislation typically requires that financial statements be presented at the AGM and that minutes of general meetings be available to members. These are minimum legal requirements. Good practice goes further.

Democracy

Members should have a meaningful say in how the organisation is run. That means contested elections are possible (not just "we need a volunteer for secretary - anyone? - right, you're it"). It means members can put motions to the AGM. It means the constitution doesn't concentrate power so heavily in the committee that members are effectively spectators.

In practice, most community organisations struggle with democracy not because the rules prevent it, but because participation is low. The same twelve people turn up to the AGM every year. Positions go unfilled. Motions from the floor are rare. The governance challenge isn't restricting democracy - it's making it actually work when people are busy and engagement is limited.

Stewardship

The committee holds the organisation's assets, reputation, and purpose in trust for the members - current and future. Stewardship means making decisions that serve the organisation's long-term interests, not just the preferences of whoever is on the committee right now. It means maintaining assets properly, managing finances prudently, planning for succession, and protecting the organisation's purpose against mission drift.

The AICD principles describe this as the duty of care, diligence, and acting in good faith. The UK Sport Code for Sports Governance (which applies at Tier 1, 2, and 3 depending on funding levels) adds the requirement to ensure financial responsibility and sustainability.

In a volunteer-run club, stewardship often comes down to a practical question: are we leaving this organisation in better shape than we found it?

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Your Constitution - The Rulebook Nobody Reads

Every incorporated association has a constitution (sometimes called rules of association). It's the legal document that defines how the organisation operates: who can be a member, how the committee is elected, what happens at general meetings, how finances are managed, and how the constitution itself can be changed.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most committee members have never read their own constitution. They inherited it when they joined the committee, assumed it was fine because it had been there for years, and never looked at it until a crisis forced them to check whether they could actually do the thing they wanted to do.

This matters for three reasons.

First, the constitution is legally binding. If your constitution says you need 21 days' notice for an AGM and you gave 14, the meeting and its resolutions may be invalid. If it says the quorum is 20 members and you had 18, nothing you voted on counts. Ignorance of your own rules isn't a defence.

Second, constitutions become outdated. State legislation changes. The way your organisation operates evolves. A constitution written in 2005 for a club that had 40 members and ran two events a year may be completely inadequate for the same club in 2026 with 300 members, a bar licence, and three paid staff. Common problems include quorum requirements that are impossibly high (or dangerously low), no provisions for electronic meetings or voting, no clear process for managing conflicts of interest, and meeting procedures that don't match how the committee actually works.

Third, the constitution is your fallback when things go wrong. Disputes about committee authority, financial decisions challenged by members, disagreements about who can vote - these all get resolved by going back to the constitution. If the constitution is vague or contradictory, the dispute doesn't get resolved. It escalates.

When to Review

Review your constitution every two to three years. Also review it when:

• Your state or territory updates its Associations Incorporation Act (check your state's consumer affairs or fair trading website)
• Your state sporting body introduces new affiliation requirements
• You change how the organisation fundamentally operates (adding paid staff, acquiring property, starting a trading arm)
• You discover a gap during a crisis - but don't wait for the crisis

How to Review

Get a small working group (not the whole committee - three people is plenty). Read the constitution against your current operations. Ask: does this reflect how we actually work? Does it comply with current legislation? Are there gaps? Then bring proposed amendments to the committee, give members proper notice, and vote on changes at a general meeting as the constitution requires.

Your state association peak body or Associations Forum may have model constitutions or review templates. Use them. There's no prize for originality in constitutional drafting.

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Committee Roles and Responsibilities

The typical community organisation committee includes a president (or chair), vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and general committee members. Some organisations add specific roles - registrar, coaching director, safeguarding officer, social coordinator.

Position descriptions matter, but they only tell half the story. The other half is the collective responsibility that every committee member shares regardless of their title.

Collective Duties

Every committee member has a duty of care - a legal obligation to act with reasonable care and diligence. They have a duty of loyalty - to act in the best interests of the organisation, not their own. And they have a duty of obedience - to ensure the organisation operates within its constitution and the law.

These aren't abstract legal concepts. They mean: read the papers before the meeting, not during it. Ask questions when something doesn't make sense. Don't vote on something you don't understand. Don't agree to spend money the organisation doesn't have. Don't let friendship or personal loyalty prevent you from raising concerns.

The BoardSource Leading with Intent research consistently shows that the most effective non-profit boards are ones where individual directors take their personal responsibility seriously, not ones with the most impressive governance frameworks on paper.

The President's Real Job

The president chairs meetings, represents the organisation externally, and sets the tone for how the committee works. But the president's real job is harder than any of that: it's maintaining the committee as a functioning team of volunteers who have different opinions, different availability, and different levels of experience. That means managing conflict before it becomes toxic, ensuring quieter members get heard, keeping meetings focused and within a reasonable time, and dealing with the inevitable situation where someone isn't pulling their weight in their role.

The president is not the boss. They're the first among equals. The moment a president starts making decisions unilaterally - even good decisions - governance starts to erode. See The Club President's Complete Handbook for more on this.

The Treasurer's Burden

The treasurer carries more personal risk than any other committee member. They're responsible for ensuring the organisation's money is properly managed, that financial records are accurate, that statutory reporting obligations are met, and that the committee has the financial information it needs to make good decisions.

In practice, the treasurer is often the most overworked volunteer on the committee. They're doing data entry, chasing unpaid invoices, reconciling accounts, preparing reports, and answering questions from other committee members who don't understand the numbers. If your treasurer burns out, your governance collapses - because the committee can't make informed decisions without reliable financial information.

The Secretary's Invisible Work

The secretary manages the organisation's records, correspondence, and compliance. Minutes, agendas, member registers, lodgements with regulators, correspondence with the state body - it all flows through the secretary. Most of this work is invisible until it doesn't get done. Then it becomes very visible indeed.

A good secretary is the committee's institutional memory. They know what was decided at last year's AGM, where the insurance certificate is filed, when the annual return is due, and which member complained about the same thing three years ago. See The Club Secretary's Complete Handbook.

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Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest in community organisations are more common than most committees realise, because they extend well beyond the obvious cases of financial benefit.

A conflict of interest exists whenever a committee member's personal interests could influence - or could reasonably appear to influence - a decision they're involved in. Financial conflicts are the easiest to spot: voting on a contract to be awarded to your own business, approving expenditure that benefits your family member, setting fees that affect your own membership category.

But conflicts also arise from relationships (your spouse coaches one of the teams and you're deciding on coaching allocations), loyalties (your best friend is being investigated for a code of conduct breach and you're on the disciplinary panel), and competing roles (you sit on the committee of both the club and the state body, and there's a dispute between them).

Why Undeclared Conflicts Are Dangerous

The damage from a conflict of interest isn't usually the decision itself - most committee members acting on a conflict would have made the same decision anyway. The damage is to trust. When members discover that a committee member had an undeclared interest in a decision, they question every other decision that person was involved in. And once trust breaks down, it's extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

The FIFA/CIES governance study of 141 clubs found that conflict of interest management was one of the governance areas with the widest variation between well-governed and poorly-governed organisations. The difference wasn't whether conflicts existed - they exist everywhere. The difference was whether the organisation had a system for identifying, declaring, and managing them.

How to Manage Conflicts

Standing register. Maintain a register of interests that every committee member updates annually. This should include employment, business interests, significant shareholdings, family relationships with other members or stakeholders, and roles in other organisations that interact with yours.

Declaration at meetings. At the start of every committee meeting, the chair should ask whether any member has a conflict of interest in relation to any item on the agenda. This should be a standing agenda item, not an afterthought.

Leave the room. When a conflict is declared, the standard procedure is for the conflicted member to leave the room during discussion and voting on that item. Record the declaration and the departure in the minutes. Some organisations allow the conflicted member to provide information before leaving but not to participate in the deliberation.

Document everything. The minutes should record: what the conflict was, who declared it, whether they left the room, and what decision was made in their absence. This protects both the organisation and the individual.

For more depth on this, see Conflicts of Interest in Grassroots Sport.

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Financial Transparency

Money is where governance most often fails in community organisations. Not because people are dishonest - though occasionally they are - but because financial information isn't shared clearly enough, frequently enough, or in a format that non-accountants can understand.

What Members Deserve to See

At minimum, members are entitled to:

• Annual financial statements presented at the AGM, either audited or reviewed depending on your organisation's size and legal requirements
• The treasurer's report at the AGM, explaining the financial position in plain language
• An operating budget for the year ahead, so members understand how their fees will be spent

Best practice adds:

• Quarterly or half-yearly summaries shared with the broader membership, not just the committee
• Clear reporting on how membership fees are allocated - people are more comfortable paying fees when they can see where the money goes
• Disclosure of all payments to committee members or related parties, even when those payments are entirely legitimate

Financial Controls

Financial controls don't need to be complicated, but they do need to exist. The basics:

• Dual signatories on the bank account, with at least two people required to approve payments above a threshold
• Segregation of duties - the person who approves expenditure should not be the same person who makes the payment, wherever possible
• Regular reconciliation - bank statements reconciled monthly, not annually in a panic before the AGM
• Receipts and documentation for all expenditure, no exceptions
• An annual audit or review appropriate to the organisation's size and turnover

The ACNC Governance Standards require charities to be accountable to members and to not misuse their position. State incorporated association legislation typically requires financial statements to be presented at the AGM. But the real standard is higher than the legal minimum: can any member, at any time, get a clear picture of the organisation's financial health? If the answer is no, financial transparency isn't where it should be.

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Decision-Making Frameworks

Community organisations make decisions in two basic ways: formal motions at meetings, and informal consensus between meetings. Both have their place, and most organisations use a combination.

Formal Motions

The traditional approach: someone moves a motion, someone seconds it, there's discussion, and the committee votes. It's recorded in the minutes. This is the appropriate process for significant decisions - approving budgets, setting fees, entering contracts, making policy, spending above a certain threshold.

Formal motions create a clear record of what was decided, why, and by whom. They ensure every committee member has the opportunity to express their view. They protect the organisation legally because they demonstrate proper process.

The trap is overusing formality. If every minor decision requires a formal motion, meetings become tediously long and the committee spends its limited time on procedural matters instead of substantive discussion. A motion to buy $50 worth of cleaning supplies is governance theatre.

Practical Consensus

Many day-to-day decisions are made by consensus, often outside of formal meetings - via email, group chat, or informal conversation. The president decides to respond to a media enquiry. The treasurer pays a routine invoice. The secretary updates the website.

Consensus works when the scope of authority is clear. The committee should explicitly agree on what decisions can be made by individual office bearers without coming back to the committee, what threshold of expenditure requires committee approval, and what decisions must always go to a formal meeting.

Write these delegations down. A simple delegations register - "the treasurer can approve expenditure up to $500, the president can approve expenditure up to $1,000, anything above $1,000 requires a committee motion" - prevents more arguments than any amount of trust and goodwill.

The Flying Minute

When a decision needs to be made between meetings, many organisations use a flying minute (or circular resolution). The secretary emails the committee with a proposed motion, members respond with their vote, and the result is recorded in the minutes of the next meeting.

Check your constitution - some require a specific process for decisions outside of meetings, and some don't permit them at all. If yours is silent on the matter, it's worth adding a provision at the next constitutional review.

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Policies Your Club Actually Needs

There are two kinds of policies in community organisations: ones that address real risks and change real behaviour, and ones that exist because someone said you need them.

Essential Policies

These are the policies every community organisation should have, regardless of size:

• Code of conduct - what behaviour is expected of members, volunteers, and committee members, and what happens when someone falls short. See Essential Policies Every Club Needs.
• Conflict of interest policy - how conflicts are declared, recorded, and managed
• Privacy policy - how member data is collected, stored, used, and protected. This isn't optional under the Australian Privacy Act (for organisations with turnover above $3 million) or the Privacy Act 1988 (for all organisations handling personal information that have opted in). In practice, every club that collects member details should have one.
• Complaints and grievance procedure - how complaints are received, investigated, and resolved. Members need to know the process before they need to use it.
• Financial management policy - who can approve expenditure, signing authorities, reconciliation requirements, audit arrangements

If your organisation involves children or vulnerable people, add:

• Child protection / safeguarding policy - mandatory in most Australian states for organisations working with children. The UK Sport Code for Sports Governance requires this at all tiers.
• Working with Children Check requirements - documented process for ensuring all relevant volunteers hold current checks

Policies That Depend on Your Context

• Volunteer management policy - important once you have more than a handful of regular volunteers
• Social media policy - important if your members post about the club online (they do)
• Risk management policy - important as your activities grow in complexity
• Alcohol management policy - essential if you serve or sell alcohol
• Inclusion and diversity policy - increasingly expected by state and national sporting bodies
• Environmental sustainability policy - relevant for organisations with facilities

Policies That Are Probably Window Dressing

Be honest with yourself. A 40-member tennis club doesn't need a strategic communication plan, a digital transformation roadmap, or a stakeholder engagement framework. Write policies that address actual risks and actual behaviour in your actual organisation. If a policy exists only because a template said it should, it'll sit in a drawer until the end of time, and that's where it belongs.

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The Governance Gap - What Happens When Volunteers Run the Show

Here is the central tension of governance in community organisations: good governance requires consistency, institutional memory, and sustained attention. Volunteering provides none of those things reliably.

Committees turn over. The treasurer who understood the chart of accounts leaves and the replacement starts from scratch. The president who spent two years building relationships with the state body moves on and nobody picks up those relationships. The secretary who kept immaculate records is replaced by someone who's never taken minutes before.

This is what the Clearinghouse for Sport calls the governance gap - the distance between what good governance requires and what volunteer capacity can consistently deliver. It's not a failure of individuals. It's a structural feature of volunteer-run organisations.

The gap manifests in predictable ways:

• Knowledge loss at transitions. Incoming committee members don't know what the outgoing ones knew. Handover is often a conversation and a cardboard box of files, not a structured transfer of institutional knowledge.
• Compliance drift. The organisation was compliant three years ago when someone who cared about compliance was on the committee. Since then, standards have changed and nobody noticed.
• Policy-practice divergence. Policies exist on paper but nobody follows them because nobody remembers they exist.
• Governance fatigue. Volunteers joined to run a club, not to be amateur corporate directors. When governance demands feel disproportionate to the organisation's size and purpose, people disengage or leave.

Closing the Gap

You won't eliminate the governance gap in a volunteer organisation. But you can narrow it.

Document decisions, not just minutes. Minutes that say "the committee discussed the clubhouse lease and agreed to proceed" are useless to the next committee. Minutes that say "the committee discussed the clubhouse lease renewal. The lease expires March 2027. The landlord has offered a 5-year renewal at $X per year plus CPI. The committee resolved to negotiate for a 3-year term. Moved: J. Smith. Seconded: R. Brown. Carried unanimously" give the next committee everything they need.

Create role handover documents. Each position should have a living document that describes the role's key responsibilities, the annual calendar of deadlines, where important files and passwords are stored, key contacts, and current projects. Update it throughout the year, not in a rush during handover.

Use systems that outlast individuals. When the treasurer manages finances in their personal spreadsheet, the knowledge leaves with them. When the club uses a system that maintains the data regardless of who is logged in, continuity is built into the infrastructure. This is one of the things TidyHQ is designed to address - but the principle applies regardless of what software you use.

Build governance into the calendar, not into heroic individuals. A quarterly governance checklist - are minutes up to date, are registers current, are policies due for review, are compliance obligations met - catches problems before they compound. The governance visibility gap widens most when nobody is looking.

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Governance for Different Organisation Sizes

Governance principles are universal. Governance practices should scale with the organisation.

Small Clubs (Under 100 Members)

A small club doesn't need a governance framework. It needs clear roles, basic financial controls, a constitution that works, and a handful of essential policies. The committee probably meets monthly in someone's lounge room or at the clubhouse after training. Meetings are informal. Decisions are made quickly.

The governance risk in small clubs isn't lack of process - it's concentration of power. When one person does everything (president-treasurer-secretary-webmaster-coach), there are no checks on anything. The constitution may say there's a committee, but if one person makes all the decisions and nobody questions them, the committee is a rubber stamp.

The fix is practical: insist on at least two signatories for money, ensure the president and treasurer are different people, present financials to the full committee monthly, and give members an actual AGM with actual reports.

Mid-Size Organisations (100–500 Members)

At this scale, informality starts to create problems. The committee is managing more money, more activities, more people, and more risk. Sub-committees emerge - grounds, coaching, social, junior development. Delegation becomes necessary because the committee can't manage everything directly.

Mid-size organisations need strategic planning, clear delegations, proper financial reporting, and a policy framework that addresses the organisation's real risks. They may have paid staff - even part-time - and that introduces employer obligations that volunteer committees often underestimate.

The governance risk here is the gap between the organisation's complexity and the committee's capacity. The club has grown, but the governance is still set up for a 50-member outfit. Decisions fall through cracks. Compliance gets missed. The committee spends all its time on operational issues and none on strategic direction.

Large Associations (500+ Members)

Large associations - state sporting bodies, national peak bodies, multi-sport organisations - need formal governance frameworks. Board skills matrices, standing committees with terms of reference, regular board evaluations, independent directors, professional management, and comprehensive risk management.

At this scale, the distinction between governance and management becomes critical. The board governs - it sets strategy, manages risk, and holds management accountable. Management manages - it runs the day-to-day operations. When boards try to manage (micromanaging staff, getting involved in operational decisions) or management tries to govern (making strategic decisions without board input), things go wrong.

The UK Sport Code for Sports Governance applies specific requirements at this level. Tier 3 organisations receiving significant public funding must demonstrate board diversity, term limits, independent chairs, and published governance documents. Similar expectations are emerging in Australia through Sport Australia's governance requirements for funded bodies.

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Working with Your State Body

If your club is affiliated with a state sporting body (or equivalent national body in the UK or NZ), governance isn't just an internal matter. Your state body has requirements, and affiliation usually means agreeing to meet them.

Common Affiliation Requirements

• Constitution aligned with the state body's template or minimum requirements
• Current Working with Children Checks for relevant roles
• Public liability insurance (often provided through affiliation, but sometimes requiring specific endorsements)
• Annual reporting - financial statements, membership numbers, activity reports
• Compliance with the sport's national integrity framework (anti-doping, match-fixing, safeguarding)
• Adoption of national codes of conduct and member protection policies

The Reporting Burden

State bodies need information from clubs to meet their own obligations to Sport Australia, UK Sport, or Sport NZ. That information flows upward: clubs report to the state body, the state body reports to the national body, the national body reports to the government funding agency.

The reporting burden can feel disproportionate at the club level. A 60-member netball club completing a 12-page governance self-assessment feels like compliance for compliance's sake. And sometimes it is. But the alternative - state bodies that have no visibility over the governance of their affiliated clubs - creates real risks around safeguarding, financial mismanagement, and reputational damage that ultimately affect every club in the sport.

The practical approach: build reporting into your regular processes rather than treating it as a separate governance tax. If your committee already produces monthly financial summaries and maintains current member records, the state body's annual report is mostly a compilation exercise, not a new workload. If those records don't exist, the state body's requirements might be the nudge you need to create them.

For more on how this relationship works in federated sport, see What the FIFA Governance Study Reveals About Federated Sport.

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Measuring Governance Quality

How do you know if your governance is good? Not perfect - good enough that you can be confident the organisation is well-directed, well-controlled, and accountable to its members.

Self-Assessment

A governance self-assessment doesn't need to be an elaborate exercise. Start with these questions:

Decision-making:

• Can we explain how major decisions were made this year?
• Did every committee member have the opportunity to contribute to those decisions?
• Were any decisions made outside the committee's authority?

Financial management:

• Are our financial records current and reconciled?
• Do committee members receive regular financial reports they understand?
• Are our financial controls proportionate and actually followed?

Compliance:

• Are we up to date with our statutory obligations (annual returns, financial reporting, insurance)?
• Are our policies current and do people actually know about them?
• Are we meeting our state body's affiliation requirements?

Transparency:

• Would a member who asked "how is this club run?" get a satisfactory answer?
• Is our financial position visible to members, not just the committee?
• Are meeting outcomes communicated to the membership?

Succession and continuity:

• If the president resigned tomorrow, would the organisation continue functioning?
• Are handover processes in place for every committee role?
• Is institutional knowledge documented, not just held in someone's head?

Score yourself honestly. The point isn't to produce a report card - it's to identify the two or three areas where improvement would make the biggest practical difference. Work on those. Repeat the exercise in twelve months.

For a more structured approach, see Governance Self-Assessment for Sport Organisations.

External Assessment

For larger organisations, external governance reviews provide an independent perspective. Sport Australia and state departments of sport sometimes offer governance health checks. The Associations Forum provides resources for association governance assessment. In the UK, Sport England's governance capability framework provides a self-assessment tool with external review options.

Don't commission an external review as a substitute for doing the internal work. The value of self-assessment isn't the score - it's the conversation the committee has while doing it.

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Where to Go from Here

Governance is not a project with a completion date. It's an ongoing practice that improves incrementally as the committee develops confidence, as processes mature, and as the organisation's culture shifts from "we've always done it this way" to "is this still the best way?"

Start with whatever feels most urgent:

• If your committee feels chaotic, start with role clarity and a delegations register
• If members are disengaged, start with transparency - share more information, more often
• If you're worried about compliance, start with a constitutional review and a policy audit
• If you've had a conflict or dispute, start with your conflict of interest policy and complaints procedure
• If your state body is asking questions you can't answer, start with your reporting and record-keeping

The organisations that govern themselves well don't do it because they have more resources or smarter volunteers. They do it because someone on the committee decided it mattered, started with one thing, and kept at it.

That someone might be you.

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Further Reading and Resources

Australian Resources

1. Sport Australia, Sport Governance Principles, Clearinghouse for Sport.
2. Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, ACNC Governance Standards.
3. Australian Institute of Company Directors, Not-for-Profit Governance Principles, 3rd edition (2024).
4. Clearinghouse for Sport, Governance Resources and Frameworks.
5. Associations Forum, Governance Resources for Australian Associations.
6. Sport Australia, Mandatory Sports Governance Principles for NSOs.

UK Resources

7. UK Sport, A Code for Sports Governance, Tier 1/2/3 Requirements.
8. Charity Commission for England and Wales, Charity Governance Code, updated 2025.
9. Sport England, Governance Capability Framework and Self-Assessment.

New Zealand Resources

10. Sport New Zealand, Nine Steps to Effective Governance.

International Research

11. BoardSource, Leading with Intent: BoardSource Index of Nonprofit Board Practices.
12. FIFA/CIES, Governance Study of 141 Professional Football Clubs, International Centre for Sports Studies.
13. Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Sport (2016), Routledge.

Academic References

14. Hoye, R. and Cuskelly, G. (2007), Sport Governance, Elsevier.
15. Shilbury, D. and Ferkins, L. (2011), 'Professionalisation, sport governance and strategic capability,' Managing Leisure, 16(2), pp. 108–127.
16. O'Boyle, I. and Bradbury, T. (eds) (2017), Sport Governance: International Case Studies, Routledge.
17. Dowling, M. et al. (2018), 'Deconstructing the concept of "good governance" in sport,' Sport in Society, 21(8), pp. 1205–1221.

Related TidyHQ Guides and Articles

• Running Your AGM Step by Step
• Essential Policies Every Club Needs
• The Club President's Complete Handbook
• The Club Secretary's Complete Handbook
• Strategic Planning for Community Organisations
• What Good Governance Means in Grassroots Sport
• The Governance Visibility Gap
• Conflicts of Interest in Grassroots Sport
• Governance Self-Assessment for Sport Organisations
• Financial Transparency and Sport Members