For clubs
Helping sporting clubs examine how they operate and supporting them to build and improve capability through Sport Australia’s Game Plan.
Game Plan is a free online platform that allows sporting clubs of all sizes to get insights into their current capability in key areas of club administration, then supports ongoing club development with a suite of tools and resources.
Club leaders access foundation modules on topics crucial for the successful operation of all clubs. Further modules are available to help clubs progress and grow in the priority areas they have identified.
Module assessments are quick and easy and can be completed by the club leader with the most knowledge of that topic. For example, the treasurer completes the finance module. Each module takes between 5 and 10 minutes to complete.
On completion of each module assessment, clubs receive a current maturity level rating, alongside recommendations about how to improve and progress to the next maturity level and supporting resources.
The 4 maturity levels are:
- Not in place – risk area, please take immediate action.
- Developing – potentially does not meet minimum standard, take action as soon as possible
- Developed – meets minimum standards and is sound process but still has improvement potential
- Excelling – highest level of benchmarked excellence well done and keep going!
There are 6 easy steps to developing your Game Plan:
1. Club profile
The club profile uniquely identifies a club within Game Plan and enables the user to define member demographics, infrastructure and the relative size or complexity of their Club.
Completing the club profile is a critical step to personalising and prioritising assessment opportunities within the platform.
2. Priorities
Game Plan allows clubs to personalise their priorities. Each Club can identify the areas of improvement they want to focus on, based on what is most relevant and beneficial for them.
The prioritisation phase helps each club understand what may be keeping them up at night and prioritise assessment in those areas.
3. Assessment
Game Plan measures club capability and performance across a range of operational areas including:
- Values and Behaviours
- Stakeholder Alignment
- Strategy, Roles and Responsibilities
- Workforce
- Governance
- Infrastructure
- Finance
- Diversified Partnerships
- Technology and Digital
- Marketing and Communications
- Safeguarding
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- Participation
- Research and Insights.
These areas were identified by industry experts and academics and provide a broader, more efficient and robust assessment of sector capability and needs than is currently achievable.
Separating each assessment area, allows the person with the most knowledge at your Club to complete the relevant module. For example - the treasurer completes the finance module. Modules are quick and easy and should take between 5-10 minutes each to complete.
There are 4 foundation modules that underpin all club operations. These are: Governance; Strategy; Finance and Workforce. Every club is expected to complete these four foundation modules first.
On the completion of each assessment module, clubs will be provided with information on what their current maturity means as well as information and recommendations for how to improve and progress to the next maturity level.
- Not in place - Risk area, please take immediate action.
- Developing - Potentially does not meet minimum standard, take action as soon as possible.
- Developed - Meets minimum standards and is sound process but still has improvement potential.
- Excelling - Highest level of benchmarked excellence well done and keep going!
4. Plan
The Plan feature allows a club to action its prioritised assessments. The plan captures details about the people, tasks, resources, and time frames to support the club’s individual improvement objectives.
Game Plan enables clubs to create track and store individual action plans for each of their priorities. The personalised organisational action plan includes access to aggregated high-quality resources to support the implementation of these actions, delivered in a timeframe determined by the club.
The Action Plans are designed to capture all initial and ongoing details about the improvement plan for that particular desired outcome.
5. Resources
To help a club successfully deliver their plan, Game Plan houses a suite of resources. These resources have been aggregated from across the sector.
The Resource library is categorised across the 13 operational assessment areas.
6. Monitor
The monitor function will assist clubs to keep track of individual action plans and the club’s overall plan, ensuring ongoing monitoring is simple.
This feature is structured to be a simple and centralised update point for each committee meeting on the key club improvement projects.
Testimonials
Lonsdale Links Golf Club
Josh Hall, General Manager
“After opening a new course and clubhouse in 2020, we reviewed our overall strategy, with the aim of building a more inclusive club. We partnered with Golf Australia and used Game Plan to progress our strategy.
We prioritised the development of grassroots junior and women’s programs and introduced a more modern and inclusive governance structure. Game Plan brought structure to how we went about driving this change and we are now reaping the rewards of being a more inclusive club.”
Sloths Dragon Boating Club
Chen Li, President
“Our club used Game Plan to assess our club’s current strengths and areas of development as part of our strategic planning process. The assessment informed our decision to conduct a new paddler survey and update our committee and sub-committee roles document using the template provided.
“We found Game Plan very easy to use and the resources were easy to adapt for our club.”
FAQ's
To access Game Plan data and analytics, NSOs and STASRs should:
- Log in to the Partner Portal.
- Navigate to ‘My Data and Analytics’ tile.
- Navigate to the ‘My Analytics’ tab.
- Navigate to the ‘Game Plan’ sub-menu.
The data and analytics can be accessed 24/7.
The data is refreshed once per day midnight.
NSOs can navigate across five menus in the ‘Game Plan’ dashboard to access and download key information.
- The ‘Dashboard’ menu provides NSOs with a snapshot of the number of clubs on Game Plan and the maturity rating of each club across the modules they have completed.
- The ‘Clubs’ menu shows the incorporation status of your clubs, the contact details of those using Game Plan and the date clubs signed up to Game Plan.
- The ‘Maturity’ menu allows NSOs to see the maturity of clubs in each module. The information can be filtered by state or territory, club name or module.
- The ‘Priorities’ menu shows which of Game Plan’s nine non-foundation modules clubs are prioritising e.g., what is keeping clubs up at night.
- The ‘Module Response’ menu reveals a club’s response to each completed question in Game Plan.
Game Plan reports and insights can be used to:
- Identify strengths and key opportunities for club development to inform an NSO’s investment and priorities (see Figure 1)
- let an NSO know what’s keeping clubs up at night (see Figure 2)
- help an NSO identify the support and resources that clubs need to continue developing.
Contact Sport Australia via gameplan@ausport.gov.au for any queries about using the data. We intend to hold several virtual workshops throughout 2022 to support NSOs to get the most out the data and understand what additional data Sport Australia could make available.
The data from each of the five menus can be exported. To export:
- Each menu has a collapsible sub-menu with three dots (see Figure 3).
- Navigate to the three dots.
- Navigate to ‘Export Data.’
Yes. In the ‘My Analytics’ ‘Game Plan’ sub-menu’ there is a further sub-menu ‘Club Reports.’ This sub-menu allows you to see information about an individual club from Game Plan including ‘Workforce’, ‘Members’, ‘Priorities’, and ‘Maturity’
The Club Reports (see Figure 4) can be used club development officers to have conversations with an individual club. The information can also be used to tailor support, resources and/or funding a NSO provides to an individual club.
The ‘Game Plan’ sub-menu in ‘My Data Submissions’ is a central place where NSOs can now store and update information about the number of clubs in your sport by state and territory.
By keeping your club numbers up to date, NSOs will have a single point of truth about your club numbers, be able to easily access historical data to understand trends in club numbers and get a quick snapshot of how many of your clubs are using Game Plan.
Sport Australia is working to provide State Sporting Organisations and State Sporting Organisation for people with disability access (collectively referred to in this document as SSOs) to the Partner Portal.
Until SSOs have access (mid-late 2022), Sport Australia encourages NSOs to download relevant Game Plan data and analytics and provide these to SSOs while ensuring privacy and confidentiality is maintained.
For more information:
For further information contact the Game Plan team at gameplan@ausport.gov.au