We successfully tendered for the Sport England Club Matters contract which involved the management and administration of Clubmark, the national sports club accreditation programme, and the delivery and development of the Club Matters workshop suite. Our initial work involved a review of the current provision of Clubmark and identified the need for more support for the 80 licensed partners (National Governing Bodies and Active Partnerships) in the use of Clubmark to embed positive change and effective real-life processes. We developed and provided assessor training for all licensed partners to address this and quickly identified a verification process to encourage a standardised approach....
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Alongside this we continued to administer Clubmark, answering general enquiries and assigning assessors to all clubs who registered their interest, and developed streamline processes, working with the technical team, to ensure assessors and clubs found the systems easy to use. Furthermore, our education arm of the business supported the marketing and delivery of the Club Matters workshops. This involved working with key partners to identify specific plans for the provision of the workshops. We inherited a small number of tutors; however, we soon understood the value of a recruitment strategy which sought to develop a new workforce within the sector....
In the first year we identified, assessed and invited over 50 tutors across the country, from both within and outside of the sport sector, to become a part of our Club Matters tutor workforce. In addition, we also developed 2 new workshops to add to the original 4 available, based around themes of volunteering and club leadership. This then led to a review of all the original workshops to ensure fit for purpose with subsequent changes being made, based on participant and tutor feedback. We now have a cohort of 55 experienced tutors who have gone on to deliver over 100 workshops, to nearly 1500 participants, across the initial 2-year period!...
Our work in this area saw a more consistent approach to the delivery of the Clubmark programme across all licensed partners, focusing on real-life impact rather than box-ticking and a significant increase in the provision of Club Matters workshops. The key outcome from this project was that club accreditation should be part of a wider development process, not standalone. Club volunteers and professional staff require more training opportunities to support the development of clubs and informal groups. Following on from this work we gained a further 2-year extension to the initial contract with Sport England through a second tender process and our sport development expertise enabled us to go on and support various other partners in their development and planning processes....