Young Board Members

Young Board Members is an online resource designed to help organisations engage with their young stakeholders. Launched in collaboration with the Youth Sport Trust, the report offers a unique insight into established youth boards from across the sector. It’s important that organisations engage with their young stakeholders in decision making roles, and use this as an opportunity to seek insight from a core membership demographic. Young Board Members explores the impact of engaging, and offers practical advice for organisations to adopt into their practices. 

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Why engage with young stakeholders?

Youth boards can provide many benefits to an organisation. When young stakeholders are empowered to act as decision makers in an organisation, this can contribute to objectivity and accountability. Organisations have a responsibility to be accountable to all their stakeholders, and consider objective views in guiding their activity. Young board members provide an opening for fresh perspectives and creative ideas in an organisation, which, in turn can benefit their strategic guidance.  Being inclusive and accountable to your young stakeholders can not only lead to better decision making, but also help to promote your organisation in a positive light; in turn, this can create external funder confidence and open new funding opportunities such as public investment and partnership working.

As well as organisational value, youth boards can also provide many benefits to the young people themselves; personally, and professionally. Providing a platform for young stakeholders to build on important qualities such as board skills, leadership and communication can help to develop future leaders and create talent pipelines in an organisation.  

How to use Young Board Members

The report presents a broad spectrum of case studies from organisations both in and out of the sport sector. They are intended to be used as a reference for youth boards and other youth engagement programmes, including the highlights and challenges faced by organisations. We’ve drawn on specific elements and themes across the nine case studies which can be tailored to any youth engagement programme, and included our own interpretations of the findings. You can use this as practical guidance to help establish or develop your youth board.  

 

 Young Board Members Report

 

For more information about the report contact the Alliance governance team.

The report uses nine organisational case studies to explore youth boards within the sport and recreation sector. Based on real-life examples, the case studies should be used as guidance to help you implement and/or develop your youth board.

Four of these make up the report’s core case studies and include the national governing bodies (NGBs):

  • British Cycling;
  • England Golf /Golf Foundation;
  • Rugby Football Union;
  • Table Tennis England.

Click here to view the core case studies. 

The remaining five, make up the reports ‘spotlight’ case studies. These are shorter pieces focused on a particular aspect of good practice in each of the organisations, and include:

  • Kent Football Association;
  • Kick It Out;
  • National Leadership Academy (Youth Sport Trust and Sport Wales);
  • Spirit of 2012;
  • Welsh Rugby Union.

Click here to view the 'spotlight' case studies.

We’ve taken some best practice examples from the case studies and formulated our own interpretation of a “Model Youth Board.” We’ve also included recommendations from The Principles of Good Governance for Sport and Recreation to help you in your governance practices.

The Model Youth Board incorporates five key functions and their associated descriptions. These can be used as guidance and tailored to suit your organisation and youth board.

Click here to view.