2023 Australian Sailing Club Survey Report

Overview:

Australian Sailing conduct an annual Club Survey to receive feedback specifically from clubs. This feedback focuses on providing the clubs ratings and comments around their engagement, usage and priorities of Australian Sailing support services and programs as well as identifying their top challenges.
Overall, the process of conducting the 2023 Club Survey has been successful. We received 197 unique responses (up from 117 in 2020 and 146 in 2022) which represents 59% of clubs nationally. Pleasingly we had responses from every State and Territory and from a wide range of clubs (big, small, metro, regional, dinghy, yacht).
Improvements based on 2022 learnings: 

This year the survey was distributed to all club committee members and General Managers (where appropriate) compared to in 2022 where it was only sent to two select key contacts at each club initially. 

This year the survey was conducted over a longer period of time and earlier in the year prior to Easter. In 2022 the survey was conducted during the Easter school holidays and was open for five weeks. Easter also traditionally marks the end of the sailing season in southern states with clubs and club committees shutting up the club and taking a break. 
The 2023 questions are almost exactly the same as the 2022 survey questions so we can make some year-on-year assessments. 

Engagement:

2023:

• 36% Extremely or Very Engaged.
• 39% Somewhat Engaged
• 25% Not so or Not at all
   

2022:

• 42% Extremely or Very Engaged.
• 36% Somewhat Engaged.
• 23% Not so or Not at all Engaged
   

Club Challenges:

Club’s importance rating of current AS Programs and Services:

Clubs ranked the top 5 AS programs and services as:

Club’s usage of current AS Programs and Services?

Clubs ranked their top 5 used programs and services to be:

Club’s effectiveness rating of current AS Programs and Services?

Clubs ranked the top 5 effective programs and services to be:

Australian Sailing’s strategic projects top priorities as rated by clubs.

Notes/Comments:

As many of you would be aware, during the 2023 State Sailing Summits we conducted a workshop to explore in greater depth the survey responses in each State/Territory. These proved useful in understanding the context and the detail around many of the challenges highlighted by Clubs. For the workshop we focused on primarily the top 3 challenges. As you can see above the top 5 challenges nationally were:

1.    On-water participation
2.    Recruiting & Retaining On-Water Volunteers
3.    Attracting new members
4.    Funding for infrastructure and maintenance
5.    Retention of existing members

*Please note four of the five relate to participation and membership and all of them are influenced by the perceptions of the image of sailing.

What was very interesting was the correlation of the detailed responses explaining how/why these are real challenges faced by clubs (around the country) and their continued similarity to the findings of the 2012 GEMBA Report that Australian Sailing Commissioned (with financial support from the Australian Sports Commission). Perceptions of cost, time, exclusive image, safety and competition with other activities (sport and others). Roughly 50% of attendees asked had some knowledge of the GEMBA report findings and recommendations.  

It would be worth considering the benefit of re-doing the GEMBA report (or similar), 10 years on, and determining if the recommendations have been implemented, if they are still relevant and if the perceptions have changed. 

Essentially, what the GEMBA report told us about what needs to change in our sport to improve its perception to increase participation and membership are the same as what clubs have told us through the Club Survey and through the Sailing Summit workshops. Barriers to increasing participation, membership and volunteers comes down to time, cost and competition with other activities. 

Regarding the challenge faced by clubs of “Funding for Infrastructure and Maintenance”, this is equally linked to the perception of government (at all levels) on the sport of sailing. This is referenced via direct feedback from the 2023 Club Survey:

“A key challenge we have found at Chelsea YC is combatting the perception that sailing is a sport of the rich and has no benefit except to serve the individual. We find this prejudice at both the state and local government level. Australian Sailing is the body that is best placed to do this lobbying at inter government level – VIC”.

Comments/notes. 

• It is interesting to note that while three of the top 5 challenges ranked by clubs relate to participation, which is the basis of the Discover Sailing Centre resources and support, that clubs are not ranking Discover Sailing Centre resources and support higher in Importance, Usage and Effectiveness. This could indicate an audience that is not aware of the Discover Sailing Centre resources, in which case we need to better promote and better upskill staff to educate club decision makers. It could also indicate that clubs are looking at on-water participation as more aligned with general member participation in club organised activities. If this is the case then the body of work that the Grow team are doing around Participation programs and a participant framework is probably more aligned and will hopefully start to take affect over the coming season/s. 
• Recruiting and retaining on-water volunteers aligns well with Officials Training and development which is consistently ranked highly.
• Safety information and the Provision of the Racing Rules of Sailing feature prominently, with the awareness of the safety information likely tied to the increased communications in the space via the Safety in Focus and Rules in Focus eDMs, the regular sections of Nautical News, and the respective new sections on the Resources website.
• Funding for infrastructure and maintenance while not a direct service AS can provide aligns closely with advocating to Government (local, state and federal). The lack of high ratings for advocacy could be due to our inability to promote this good work that is done due to the “behind the scenes” nature of it. Possibly there is a lack of awareness and understanding by our team to be able to communicate effectively on our advocacy work or possibly our marketing and communications is not effective in promoting this work. 

Australian Sailing Strategic Plan

It is worth noting that the priority order of the Australian Sailing strategic priorities listed below remains relevant and aligns directly with the feedback received from clubs. More work needs to be done to communicate effectively to clubs and classes to educate them on these projects and the possible improvement in outcomes, should they choose to adopt them.

1.    Participation and Membership Growth
2.    Club Support Program
3.    Coach, Instructor and Officials Development Plan
4.    Sailing Participant Pathway
5.    National Safety and Integrity Framework
6.    Stakeholder Engagement Plan
7.    Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility Plan
8.    Environmental Action Plan.


Conclusion:

The annual Club Survey remains a useful tool to “check in” with clubs in a robust manner to capture a collective view and feedback. There is room to improve the uptake of the survey and the number of responses from clubs which will be worked on for 2024. The information gained from clubs with regards to their challenges and views on the current AS services and programs is in line with current perceptions of staff which is gained from their conversations and insights into clubs and the sailing community. For this reason, the club survey remains a great qualifier of AS strategy and operations as set by the Board and Senior Management. 

As the Pulse Survey gains traction and use, we will gain further insights that will be valuable in gaining a more in depth understanding of the sailing community on an annual and on-going basis.

Thank you to all clubs who participate in providing feedback through the 2023 (and previous) Club Survey, it is greatly appreciated.