How to run a grassroots sports club (UK)

1. The committee year

Winter sports (rugby union, hockey, netball, basketball) run September to April. Summer sports (cricket, rugby league) run March or April to September or October. Water polo runs both. The committee year is the same shape whichever you play; it just starts in a different month.

• Season ends: presentations, end-of-season social, kit returned, the last match fees chased.
• Six to eight weeks later: AGM. Accounts, elections, subs for next season, any rule changes.
• Off-season: affiliation renewed, league entries in, venue rebooked, coach courses, welfare officer refresher, pre-season registration opens.
• Four weeks before the first match: every player registered on the governing body’s system, kit in, officials organised.
• In season: results in by the deadline, match fees collected, one newsletter a month, safeguarding concerns logged the day they happen.

The single most useful habit: agree next year’s officers before this season ends. The AGM should ratify, not recruit.

2. The roles every committee needs

• Chair: runs meetings, is the public face, takes the big decisions.
• Secretary: minutes, affiliation, league correspondence, the calendar. In rugby union and hockey the Fixtures Secretary is often a separate person and is the one whose weekends fall apart if the job is not done.
• Treasurer: bank account, subs, match fees, expenses, year-end accounts.
• Welfare Officer: mandatory in every sport once you have under-18s; sits on the committee.
• One person who owns officials: an Umpire Coordinator in hockey and netball, a Table Officials lead in basketball, a referee contact in water polo. Four of the seven sports make the home club supply and pay officials, and a missing umpire costs points.

Sport-specific additions the governing body will ask about: a RugbySafe Lead and a Match Card Administrator in rugby union; a Discipline Officer in hockey; a First Aider per match and a Game Day Manager in rugby league; a DBS verifier in basketball; a Club Safeguarding Officer and a scorer in cricket.

3. The AGM

Ninety minutes, in this order: apologies and last year’s minutes; Chair’s report; Treasurer’s report with the year-end balance and next year’s budget; Welfare Officer’s report (incidents, DBS status, coach training); elections with every post open; the subs vote; any other business with a hard stop; drinks.

Check your constitution for quorum. Minute everything. Publish the minutes within a week; hockey clubs put them in the documents section of the website as a matter of course, and every governing body accepts that as evidence of governance.

4. Money

• One account, two signatories, and a threshold (often £200) above which both approve.
• No cash. Card or Direct Debit for subs; card for match fees; bank transfer for expenses with a receipt.
• Match fees are a second income line, not an afterthought, in hockey, cricket and netball. Track them per match, per player. A team that does not collect its match fees is subsidised by the teams that do.
• Officials’ fees are a cost line in hockey, basketball, netball and water polo. Budget them per home fixture.
• Year-end accounts, independently reviewed. England Hockey requires it; every grant funder asks for it.

Grants worth knowing: the Sport England Movement Fund (£300 to £15,000, with a governance test above £10,000 and a twelve-week lead time); the ECB County Grants Fund (£1,000 to £15,000, priority to women’s, girls’ and disability cricket); the Rugby Football Foundation’s Groundmatch grants and interest-free loans; Basketball England’s Development Grant (£250 to £1,500, opening in October); the RFL’s Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund.

5. Safeguarding as an operating system

The committee owns this, not the welfare officer alone. The annual cycle:

• Welfare officer certificate current (three-year refresh in most sports).
• DBS checks tracked on a list with renewal dates (three years).
• Coach qualifications at the level the governing body requires (Level 2 to coach unsupervised in basketball; Level 1 for U6–11 and Level 2 from U12 in rugby league; Level 3 first aiders with the Headcase concussion module in rugby union).
• Policy reviewed at the AGM and republished.
• The governing body’s audit done on time: the RFU safeguarding audit in late October; ECB Safe Hands compliance by 30 April; Swim England’s Wavepower statement with Club Affiliation.

Template and per-sport requirements: safeguarding policy template.

6. GDPR, the bits that apply

You hold names, dates of birth, medical notes, parents’ phone numbers. That is personal data and some of it is special-category data. The practical minimum: a one-page privacy notice on the website saying what you collect and why; collect only what you use; keep it somewhere with a login, not in a shared spreadsheet; delete it when a member leaves; and ask before publishing a child’s name or photo.

Two sports have made consent explicit in their own systems. England Hockey shows under-18 names on public team sheets only with parental consent recorded in GMS, and adults can opt out. Basketball England issues licence cards from PlayHQ registrations. Match your website’s player pages to those settings: private by default, public only with recorded consent.

7. The deadlines that carry fines

8. Volunteers

The biggest risk to a club is not money. It is nobody wanting to be Chair next year. Recruit constantly, in small doses. Ask parents in their second season, not their first. Split big roles: Treasurer and Match Fees Coordinator are two people. Thank people in public, in the newsletter, by name. A club that publishes its committee with photos finds it easier to fill the gaps, because people can see the job is done by someone like them.

9. The tools a club actually needs

1. The governing body’s system. GMS (rugby union and hockey), ENgage (netball), PlayHQ (basketball), GameDay (rugby league), Play-Cricket (cricket), the Online Membership System (water polo). Not optional; keep it current.
2. A club website for the public side: training times, join, fixtures and results, safeguarding page, shop, news. See your club website.
3. A messaging tool for the people already in. WhatsApp for this week; email for anything a new member should be able to find later.
4. Subs collection by card or Direct Debit.
5. A treasurer’s spreadsheet. Google Sheets is fine at this size.

Retire anything nobody uses. If the WhatsApp group replaced the Facebook page, delete the Facebook page.