From Pipe Dream to Reality: A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning for Your Sport Club

Let me set the scene. You’re a board member at your local sport club, likely because your child participates. Your to-do list is a mile long. The entire board is perpetually busy—planning the season, running the season, or wrapping up the season.

Meanwhile, the "big ideas" get kicked around at meetings but never go anywhere. That new facility, the expanded programming for athletes with disabilities, the fund to eliminate fees for low-income families—they remain pipe dreams. It’s only ever talk. And truthfully, you have no idea where you would even begin to make it real.

Sound familiar? That gap between your frustrating reality and those exciting dreams is bridged by a single, powerful tool: a living, breathing strategic plan. It's the mechanism that turns wishing into doing, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said.

But a plan is more than a document. It's a journey. Here’s a simple roadmap to guide you.

Step 1: Define Your Destination (The Strategic Plan)

Before you can plan a route, you need to agree on where you're going. That's your strategic plan. Think of it not as a binder on a shelf, but as your club's story about its future. It typically looks out over three to five years and answers the big, aspirational questions:

• Who do we want to be? What is our ultimate vision for our club's impact on our community?
• What will we prioritize? We can't do everything, so what are the 3-5 big goals that matter most?
• How will we be more inclusive? This is a critical question. Will we aim to increase participation for girls? Create a more welcoming environment for New Canadian families? Ensure our leadership reflects our community's diversity?

This high-level plan unifies your board and volunteers under a shared vision and communicates your priorities to the world.

Step 2: Create Your Roadmap (The Operational Plan) 

A dream destination is inspiring, but it's useless without a turn-by-turn map. That map is your operational plan. If the strategic plan is the "what" and "why," the operational plan is the "who, how, and when."

This is where you break down the elephant one bite at a time. The operational plan is typically built annually and is tied directly to your budget. It turns your lofty strategic goals into concrete actions.

• Strategic Goal: "Create a more welcoming environment for New Canadian families."
• Operational Tactic: "Budget $500 to translate registration forms into the top three languages spoken in our community by August 1st, led by the Communications Director."

See the difference? One is the dream; the other is the work. You need both.

Step 3: Check Your Compass (Evaluation & Reporting)

Once you're on the road, you need to make sure you're still heading in the right direction. That's the role of evaluation—a step that is too often missed. Your strategic goals need to be measurable, not just inspirational.

• Define success: How will you know if you've achieved your goal? If your goal is to "increase girls' participation," a target might be "a 15% increase in girls' registration in our U10 program by 2027."
• Schedule check-ins: You don't wait until the end of a five-year trip to see if you're lost. You should be evaluating your progress at least annually (as you build your next operational plan), at the midway point, and again at the end. This allows you to adjust to new realities (as we all learned in 2020).

Reporting on your progress is how you build trust and accountability with your members, parents, and community partners. It shows them you are responsible stewards of their registration fees and their trust.

It Starts with a Conversation

Embarking on this journey can feel daunting. It's tough to find the time and mental space to pull back from the day-to-day chaos and think about the future. But planning doesn’t have to be a painful, overly corporate process.

When it's done right, it's an energizing and unifying experience that gives purpose to all your hard work. It ensures your pipe dreams have a real chance of becoming your reality.

Feeling ready to turn your club's dreams into a concrete plan, but don't want to go it alone?

I'm here to help—I truly love this work! I can guide your board through a process that is not only effective but also enjoyable and easy to understand. Learn more about my approach to strategic planning.