Clubmark is the national, Sport England led quality accreditation scheme for high quality junior sports clubs. Licensed national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) and county sport partnerships (CSPs) are empowered to award Clubmark to proven high quality clubs.

Originally created in 2002, Knight, Kavanagh & Page has managed the strategic development and operation of Clubmark since 2006 when the number of accreditations stood at 1,250. KKP has, with the support of Sport England, NGBs and CSPs, taken the raw product and turned Clubmark into a robust, high quality, defensible scheme which has clear endorsement by wider stakeholders across the sector.

Originally tasked with reaching 10,000 accredited clubs by the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, from October 2010 the figures stand at more than 10,000 accredited clubs across more than 50 sports; plus a further 4,700 actively working towards achieving the recognised stamp of approval.

Clare MacLeod, KKP's National Clubmark Manager works closely with partners and stakeholders across the sector to embed the Scheme's robustness and broaden its reach. Key achievements of our work in the four years of Clubmark management include:

Licensing

• Creating and managing a licensing process for all NGBs in the scheme. A diverse array of 50 sports; from cricket and rugby to canoeing and rowing, boxing and Aikido, are now licensed to award Clubmark.
• Widening impact by licensing CSPs to accredit clubs in sports with small NGBs that struggle to accredit clubs on a national basis (such as handball, lifesaving and ice skating).
• Facilitating the Clubmark Advisory Group, a panel of licensed NGB and CSP officers which has delegated responsibility to manage the strategic development and continuous improvement of the scheme.
• Working with the English Federation of Disability Sport EFDS (the national body responsible for developing sport for disabled people in England) to support disability sport clubs through the licensing process.

Assessor training

• Development and delivery of training for assessors: over 800 people have attended 70 sessions since the training was introduced in summer 2007. Participants range from local authority SDOs to NGB regional and national managers. This has been crucial in maintaining consistency between sports and regions.

External verification

• Managing the external verification process as a vehicle for quality assurance. We independently assess a quota of clubs across all sports and regions to evaluate impact and confirm that the way NGBs award Clubmark is consistent and that it continues to be a robust, quality accreditation.

Performance management

• Creating bi-annual benchmarking documents -a mixture of maps, graphs and tables to indicate the robustness of Clubmark within each CSP and local authority area.
• Providing partners with information relating to the geographical location of clubs, available by sport and by region which provides valuable insight to target areas for future development.

Marketing

• Annual brand evaluation report assessing implementation and ensuring adoption and use of the distinctive Clubmark brand to raise awareness and profile. Creation of a webpage to enable partners to promote the values of Clubmark in a consistent manner.
• Improved marketing & communication through channels such as the Clubmark newsletter we introduced. It now has an 8,000 strong circulation reaching its target audience of accredited and working towards clubs as well as industry partners and stakeholders
• Hosting and running the website as a central portal for information and best practice - this has registered more than 200,000 hits since inception in 2006 and is regularly updated with case studies and articles.
• Developing the range of benefits and encouraging stakeholders and affiliates to recognise and reward accredited clubs.

For more information about Clubmark visit www.clubmark.org.uk

For more information about Sport England visit www.sportengland.org