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Office of Sport

In late 2017 the Office of Sport began the State Sporting Organisation Benchmarking and Organisational Health Research Project. The aim of the Project was:

  • to identify key benchmarks to define what sound organisational health means for the sport sector
  • to develop a survey framework that could be used by both the sport sector and the Office of Sport to measure the levels of organisational health in State Sporting Organisations (SSOs) and State Sporting Organisations for people with disability (SSODs)

The first aim of the Project was to better understand what ‘sound’ organisational health. A review was undertaken of organisational health benchmarking projects in the not-for-profit sector in Australia and New Zealand regarding what constitutes organisational health in the not-for-profit sector.

The review includes considerations of various benchmarking surveys and highlights the common themes and key learnings from those surveys.

The six common Key Indicator areas highlighted by the review include Governance; Financial management; Leadership, culture & integrity; Strategy & planning; Delivery; and Risk Management & Accountability.

Review of Organisational Health (June 2017) (PDF, 156.89 KB)

Using the Review of Organisational Health as a basis, a survey framework was developed using the six Key Indicator areas as the basis.

The survey is comprised of 85 questions across the six Key Indicator areas:

  • Governance: related to the organisation's structure, constitution, membership, voting rights, compliance with applicable legislation, policies and the operation and composition of the Board.
  • Financial management: focused on financial ratios as indicators of financial health and practices adopted by the organisation.
  • Leadership, culture and integrity: considered behaviours of the organisation, staff practices, volunteers and the integrity measures the organisation has in place.
  • Strategy/strategic plan: addressed strategic and operational plans, a digital strategy and expenditure on "back of house" (administrative) functions.
  • Delivery: how an organisation delivers its services, how it collects and stores data, how it approaches the inclusion of people with a disability, and how an organisation trains and develops its coaches and officials.
  • Risk management and accountability: related to insurance, risk mitigation tools, access to professional advice, recruitment and training and measures in place for working with children.

All data is based on self-reported responses to the Survey questions from the participant State Sporting Organisations.

Tiers
For the purposes of the Survey, State Sporting Organisations and State Sporting Organisations for people with disability were separated into four Tiers. The following table shows how the four Tiers map to the existing Sport Development Program categories used by the Office of Sport. Note that all State Sporting Organisations for people with disability were all included in the same tier given the nature of their service delivery:
 

Survey Tier Office of Sport – Sport Development Program Category
Tier 1 (smaller sized sports) Categories 1A and 1B
Tier 2 (small to medium sized sports) Categories 2, 3 and 4
Tier 3 (medium to larger sized sports) Categories 5 and 6
Tier SSOD (State Sporting Organisation for people with disabilities) All SSODs, regardless of Office of Sport category

For a list of State Sporting Organisations in each Tier (PDF, 104.13 KB)
 
Scoring
The scoring matrix developed for the Survey was informed by the 2017 review of organisational health and benchmarking projects.
 

Organisational Health Rating Definition
Outstanding organisational health An organisation with a score of 90% or more on the Survey.
Exceeding sound organisational health An organisation with a score of between 80% and 89% on the Survey.
Sound organisational health An organisation with a score of between 70% and 79% on the Survey.
Working towards sound organisational health An organisation with a score of less than 69% or less.
On this basis, two elements have been identified as necessary for a State Sporting Organisation or State Sporting Organisation for people with disabilities to demonstrate it has sound organisational health:
  1. a threshold result or score of 126 out of a possible score of 180, which equates to a result of 70% - importantly any combination of answers which add to 126; and
  2. obtain at result of 50% or more in each of the six (6) Key Indicator areas. This will be assessed as meeting the Key Indicator.
Maximum scores for each of following Key Indicators
Governance 30pts
Financial Management 30pts
Leadership, Culture and Integrity 30pts
Risk Management and Accountability 30pts
Strategy and Planning 30pts
Delivery 30pts
Total 180pts
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