Benchmark your practice
See where your club is doing well and where you could do more.
The Welcoming Clubs Benchmarking Tool helps you recognise what you’re already doing well, identify opportunities to strengthen your practice and decide what makes sense to work on next based on your resources and needs.
Free / Takes less than 10 minutes / Designed for community sport
Every club is different. You might have great people and a strong culture but haven’t put some of your practices into place yet. Or you might discover you’re already doing more than you realised.
The Benchmarking Tool gives you a snapshot of where your club is right now. It’s there to help you understand your strengths and find practical opportunities to build on them.
No pass or fail. No judgement. Just a useful place to start.
How it works
1. Answer
Respond to 20 statements about what currently happens at your club →
2. See your benchmark
Get a snapshot of your club’s current inclusive practice →
3. Find your opportunities
See what’s working and where there may be opportunities to strengthen your practice. Seek support →
4. Take action
Choose actions that make sense for your club, your community and the resources you have available →
5. Come back and benchmark again to see what’s changed.
Your benchmark is the starting point, not the finish line.
The Welcoming Clubs Standard
What are we measuring
The Benchmarking Tool is built around the Welcoming Clubs Standard, developed with community and sporting clubs and organisations to reflect what inclusive practice looks like in community sport.
It looks beyond whether your club has the “right” policies. It considers what actually happens across the club — how people are welcomed, how decisions are made, how you connect with your community and whether people can participate and belong.
Unlike a tick and flick activity, The Welcoming Clubs Standard serves as a structured guide for meaningful action, tailored to meet the unique needs of each community and the resources of individual clubs.
The Standard is made up of:
6 Categories: These form the building blocks of the standard, covering various aspects critical for fostering an inclusive environment.
20 Criteria: Within each category, we have identified key criteria that clubs can use to frame their inclusivity eorts.
26 Indicators: Supporting the criteria are specific indicators that oer practical measures to gauge progress and success.
What is inclusive practice?
Its about what your club 'does'.
Inclusive practice doesn’t have to mean starting a new program or writing another strategy.
It can be things like:
- making it easier for a new family to know who to ask for help
- asking members what could make the club more accessible
- understanding why people leave
- making reporting processes clear
- reducing financial barriers to participation
- creating opportunities for different members to contribute to club decisions.
Ready to see where your club is at?
20 statements. Less than 10 minutes. A useful snapshot of what’s working and where you could go next.
About Welcoming
Welcoming Australia exists to cultivate a culture of welcome and create a future where people of all backgrounds have equal opportunity to belong contribute and thrive
- clubs@welcoming.org.au
- 0415 524 428
Welcoming Clubs is an initiative of Welcoming Australia, proudly supported by the Scanlon Foundation.
Acknowledgement
Our work is conducted on the stolen lands and waters of First Nations representing hundreds of clans and language groups. We acknowledge that our lives have benefitted from theft and dispossession and that we have a responsibility to support the efforts of Indigenous peoples as they work towards self-determination, sovereignty and land back. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
