Organisational governance & grassroots sports clubs
This essay presents the findings of research which focused on three grassroots sports organisations and takes a fresh, in-depth look at the governance practices of voluntary sports clubs.
It looks at some of the ways in which grassroots sport is responding to the challenges it faces, the extent to which the improved governance practices are manifested further down the sector’s ecosystem, and what this looks like in practice for clubs with little resource and which rely so heavily on volunteers to function.
Date: 11th Nov 2024
Author: Dr Chris Gunn & Professor Geoff Walters
This essay presents the findings of research which focused on three grassroots sports organisations and takes a fresh, in-depth look at the governance practices of voluntary sports clubs.
These organisations are the sort of local grassroots clubs with which we are all familiar and which are a bedrock of the UK’s sporting, social and cultural life. They are also subject to changing attitudes to governance and are uniquely vulnerable to a range of pressures: policy, societal, economic and environmental, to name a few.
This essay looks at some of the ways in which grassroots sport is responding to these challenges, the extent to which the improved governance practices that we are increasingly accustomed to seeing in larger bodies are manifested further down the sector’s ecosystem, and what this looks like in practice for clubs with little resource and which rely so heavily on volunteers to function.
