Somer AC – stars of Club Standards
Whether you are a brand-new affiliated club or are wanting to ensure you are fully compliant, Club Standards are here to ensure that you have a safe environment for your runners and athletes to flourish.
We recently caught up with Somer AC who have achieved all seven Club Standards to get their top tips and advice.
What does Club Standards mean to you as a committee?
“Club Standards creates a safe and inclusive environment for all our members. The Standards are a simple and structured framework to help us work towards compliance. Obtaining the Standards makes our club more attractive and appealing to members; they can be reassured that all of the correct procedures have been put in place for their journey with us.”
The approach
Club Standards may seem overwhelming trying to achieve all seven in one go, so we’ve broken down Somer AC’s approach to help you along the way.
“As a club, we were looking to review our policies anyway and have historically been through Clubmark, so Club Standards was a natural progression. It provided an ideal time to review all of our policies together as a committee, not just those relating to Club Standards.
“We started by introducing the different Club Standards to the committee to see where we needed to work on along with the help of our local Club Support Manager, Rich Ayling. Once we had identified the gaps, we assigned different committee members Club Standards tasks to work through. As they had made progress, we came back together to review these and sign-off as a committee.
“We thought it was important to make a timeline of when we would work through Club Standards, this made it seem much less daunting and it became a straightforward process. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the paperwork or the potential time to complete, we broke it down into bitesize chunks and kept in touch with regular committee meetings.
“England Athletics have a range of templates and resources that can be found on Club Hub. These can then be personalised to suit your club and these saved us a lot of time.”
Some top tips!
Whether you have five members or 500, if you need some extra guidance here’s some final top tips:
- Breakdown Club Standards into manageable chunks and put a timeline together to help keep your committee members on track.
- Be smart over your approach. For example, could your club make an addition to the membership form asking all members to agree to the new Code of Conduct?
- Utilise the templates from Club Hub as a starting point before personalising the content of policies for your club.
- Use the England Athletics Club Standards webinar recordings to support you – these can be found on Club Hub.
- Display your Club Standards and policies on your club website if you can to ensure full compliance and transparency.
- Most importantly, if you are struggling or need a helping hand, don’t be afraid to ask our dedicated team of Club Support Managers for assistance!
Nominate your club in the Regional Volunteer Awards!
Did you know that Club of the Year is one of the 8 categories as part of this year’s Regional Volunteer Awards? As part of the assessment criteria, Club Standards scores are used and we are looking for nominations from clubs that are committed to looking after their members.
If your club has been working through Club Standards like Somer AC, why not submit a nomination and tell us why your club is so special and deserves to win a regional award? Find full details of the Regional Volunteer Awards.