Meeting Clubs Where They Are

Every club looks roughly the same from the outside, a committee, a season, a spot on the ladder. Sit in on a few committee meetings and the differences show up fast. Some clubs can tell you exactly where every dollar sits and what's coming next season. Others are still tracking membership on a spreadsheet someone built years ago, hoping nobody asks about the bank balance before the treasurer's back from leave. Same sport, sometimes the same competition, completely different starting points. For a long time, the advice available to clubs has pretended otherwise, one workbook, one webinar series, one checklist, as if every club needed the same thing at the same time.

That's the thing about most club governance advice, it's written for the club in the middle, and it quietly assumes every club is starting from roughly the same place. VicSport's brand new State of Victorian Sport & Recreation report, the first of its kind, puts hard numbers behind what anyone who has worked across more than one club already knows. The gap between clubs isn't small, and it isn't closing on its own.

What the data actually shows

VicSport surveyed the sector against twenty four capability areas, grouped into six domains: Safe & Inclusive, Leadership, Sustainability, People, Delivery, and Evidence & Innovation. Safe & Inclusive practice scores strongly at 6.39 out of 8, real proof that child safety and integrity work of the last decade has landed. But Sustainability sits at 4.90, People at 4.80, Delivery at 4.67. Half of respondents rate the support available to clubs between 0 and 4 out of 10.

Read that again, half. Not a struggling minority, half the sector.

The report's own framing is useful here. Capability creates the conditions people experience. Experience shapes the relationships they build. Relationships shape whether people stay and contribute. It's a chain, and the weakest link isn't people's commitment to their club, the report is clear that the human strength of the system, the pride, the enjoyment, the advocacy, is carrying more weight than the organisational capability underneath it. That's not sustainable indefinitely. Goodwill is finite.

Why "meeting clubs where they are" isn't just a nice phrase

The Club Health Check I built for Strive Sport works across six domains too, Direction, Governance, People, Finance, Members, Operations, and every time I run it, the same thing happens. The six scores never come back even. A club might have a rock solid committee and no idea what its actual financial position is. Another might have beautifully kept books and a governance structure that hasn't been looked at since 2015. There is no such thing as a generically "unhealthy" club. There's a club that's weak in two domains and strong in four, and the support it needs looks completely different from the club next door with the opposite pattern.

A one-size response to that variation wastes everyone's time. A club with a functioning committee and a financial black hole doesn't need a governance overhaul, it needs a finance system. A club with strong operations and a burnt-out, three-person leadership team doesn't need more paperwork, it needs someone in the room helping them plan succession. Handing every club the same workbook and wishing them luck is how you get the 50.9% number in the first place.

What Strive Sport actually offers, and who each is for

This is why Strive Sport runs as a handful of distinct services rather than one program, each one answering a different version of "where is my club actually stuck?"

The Club Health Check is the starting point for a club that suspects something's off but can't tell you which of the six domains is the weak one. It's the diagnostic, so investment goes where it will move the needle, not into whichever problem is loudest this month.

The Strive Sport Webinars (the current Spring Series runs weekly on Wednesdays from September through to November) are the lowest-friction way in. Nine sessions covering exactly the pressure points VicSport's data flags, inclusive leadership, volunteer recruitment and retention, succession planning, governance, running better meetings, and strategic planning, priced from $40 for a single session up to $250 for the full series, or $400 for a club access pass covering up to five people from the same committee. If your gap is knowledge and time rather than a full overhaul, this is where to start.

The Club Development Program is for clubs ready for a deeper engagement, workshops, tailored club support, a full governance review, and a 3-year strategic plan, built around the five areas clubs consistently need help with, governance and strategic leadership, financial sustainability, operations and structure, participation and club development, and building inclusive, sustainable communities. This is the option for a club moving deliberately from volunteer-dependent to properly structured.

The Women's Leadership Program sits slightly apart, built for the individual rather than the committee. It's a one-day interactive workshop ($900 per participant, running in Melbourne, Ballarat and Geelong, with club-specific versions available) for women athletes and coaches building leadership capability, backed by a practical workbook, access to the Strive Sport Mentoring Program, and quarterly networking. It's a direct answer to the People domain gap VicSport's data shows across the sector, good clubs need a pipeline of capable leaders, not just a strong committee today.

Where this leaves your club

VicSport's report ends on a line I keep coming back to, if Victoria can invest in capability as deliberately as it has invested in participation, the vision is within reach. The same is true at club level. The clubs that get ahead over the next few years won't be the ones with the most passionate volunteers, plenty of clubs have that already, they'll be the ones that worked out precisely where their capability gap sits and put the right size of support against it.

If you're not sure where to start, that's exactly what a Club Health Check is for. Or if you'd rather dip a toe in first, the Spring Webinar Series is running now, register for whichever session speaks to your club's biggest current headache. Get in touch with Strive Sport at strivesport.com.au and we'll work out where your club actually is, not where a generic checklist assumes it should be.

‍ ‍Source: VicSport, State of Victorian Sport & Recreation 2026 (inaugural annual report). Service details from strivesport.com.au/servicesandprograms, /clubdevelopmentprogram, /strive-sport-webinars-1 and /womens-leadership-program.