Implementing community sport policy: understanding the variety of voluntary club types and their attitudes to policy

Abstract

The Olympic Legacy Plan has been a governmental concern prior to the London 2012 Games, particularly, the aspiration to use the event to inspire participation in sport. However, scant attention has been directed towards the voluntary sector and its role as a delivery agent of the legacy aspirations. New policies for community sport set out a clear focus on using national governing bodies and voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) to deliver growth in adult sports participation and to reduce the proportion of participants dropping out of sport by the age of 25.How far voluntary organizations are aware of and comply with top-down approaches to policy implementation is debatable, particularly when considering the origins and motives of voluntary clubs, their heterogeneous characteristics and their general indifference towards national sport-related policy. This relationship forms the basis of this enquiry. It draws from implementation theory and seeks to explore how far VSCs are aware of policy goals and to understand club management practices and their likely impact on the role of the VSC in delivering community sport policy goals. The findings identify a variety of management practices that can be broadly categorized into three 'cluster types'. Each VSC cluster has a distinct set of aims, support needs and policy outputs. This article concludes by suggesting that more work is required in segmenting club types to identify their diverse support needs and the roles that they may be able to play in increasing participation and reducing the proportion of young people dropping out of sport. IntroductionAt its core, this article is concerned with the relationship between national, highly professionalized organizations who make policy (Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Sport England and national governing bodies (NGBs)) and the local, relatively informal sport-related organizations run by volunteers who, at some distance, are expected to implement it (see Figure 1). Specifically, it will evaluate the role of sports clubs in delivering national community sport policy, particularly in relation to increasing participation in sport and reducing the proportion of young people dropping out of sport. We seek to research this vexed issue by (i) categorizing voluntary sports club (VSC) types based on their typical management practices and (ii) revealing the perceptions of VSC volunteers towards national sport policy and the expectation of VSCs as policy implementers.

Event and club volunteer potential: the case of women’s rugby in England

“…This suggests that current inequalities in sport volunteering will continue to exist, if no additional support is provided by the government to tackle them (Kisby 2010, Taylor et al 2012. There is also lack of empirical evidence to support whether this bottom-up approach to policy implementation coincides with the values, willingness, ability and interest of the grass-roots organisations to be involved in the process of promoting and providing sport participation opportunities and facilitate social mobility through social capital development (May et al 2013).…”

Leveraging the sport participation legacy of the London 2012 Olympics: senior managers’ perceptions

“…This details how they 110 plan to use National Lottery and Exchequer money to increase the number of individuals participating in their sport (Sport England 2016a). Previous research has provided some critical insights on the English VSCs, particularly on issues pertaining to volunteer's attitudes, funding, national policy implementation as well as on communication issues, NGB capacity and competition felt between NGBs and VSCs (Garrett 2004, Nichols andJames 2008;Taylor, Barrett, & Nichols, 2009, 115 Harris et al 2009, May et al 2013). …”

Which wider social roles? An analysis of social roles ascribed to voluntary sports clubs

“…When addressing the relationship between sport policy and VSCs, almost without exception scholars refer to the contents of national sport policies (e.g. Adams, 2011;Coalter, 2007a;Harris, Mori, & Collins, 2009;May, Harris, & Collins, 2013;Skille, 2009;Stenling & Fahl en, 2014). This discrepancy between local governments' funding responsibility and scholarly focus on national sport policy suggests a need for further scrutiny of local sport policies.…”

“…Analyses of the public benefits to which VSCs are perceived to contribute are often broad brush (e.g. Adams, 2011;May et al, 2013) or case specific (e.g. Skille, 2009), which results in a poor understanding of the plurality of social roles and the specific characteristics of these roles ascribed to voluntary sports clubs.…”