Club mission statement for the club - more sponsors & improved communication | Developing an association mission statement - more sponsors, better communication and member retention

Club mission statement for the club - more sponsors & improved communication

A mission statement can sustainably improve the external perception of your club and make you more visible to sponsors. We discuss how you can successfully benefit from a mission statement with our interview guest Tobias Erkelenz from TSV Urdenbach.

spized | Club management

December 3, 2024 |

Whats’ on this page

1. The new mission statement of TSV Urdenbach - Interview with Tobias Erkelenz

2. This is how it all began: Association work without binding elective office

2.1 Project-related commitment as the basis for implementing ideas in the association

2.2 “We have always been a very family-oriented club”

2.3 Hard-working little helpers: How 30 people developed TSV Urdenbach's mission statement

2.4 Findings from the survey results

3. Mission statement in the club: The 3 pillars of TSV Urdenbach

3.1 "We have gained new volunteers with the developed mission statement"

3.2 TSV Urdenbach: "Club with a heart"

3.3 How the mission statement ensured an increase in sponsors

4. What happens next? "Strengthening volunteering and making it more sustainable"

4.1 Tobias' most important success factors for a successful mission statement process

The new mission statement of TSV Urdenbach - Interview with Tobias Erkelenz

Many clubs have a mission statement, but putting the resulting views and content into practice is not so easy. We want to find out what positive effects the mission statement has had for TSV Urdenbach. Our guest has made his club fit for the future. Tobias joined his club early on as a coach and completed an FSJ (voluntary social year) there. After holding various professional positions, he returned to his home club. What is particularly interesting is that Tobias never had any board member responsibilities during the implementation of the mission statement. TSV Urdenbach has around 1,000 members and is geographically located in the imaginary triangle between Düsseldorf, Wuppertal and Leverkusen. Tobias will tell us how the process for the club's mission statement went. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Pascal: Before we really get into it, I would like to know what your best experience in sport was?

Tobias: That wasn't that long ago. A player I coached in the U9s at Fortuna Düsseldorf recently played in the semi-final of the German championship against Schalke 04. Even though I only coached him at the beginning, I never lost contact with him and it's a great experience for me to see him hopefully take the next steps at Fortuna and gain a foothold at my favorite club.

This is how it all began: Association work without binding elective office

Pascal: Let's move on to TSV Urdenbach. How did you come to develop a mission statement after your return, even though you are not or were not a board member?

Tobias: The request came from a coach friend of mine. It started with the question of whether I could help train the first women's team once a week. One or two years later, I was asked for support in marketing and sales because many people were aware of my professional background. And it's always difficult to say “no” in a club. The biggest advantage of being part of our club is that you are not tied to fixed positions.

Martin: What exactly is your professional background and has your work experience helped you in your voluntary work?

Tobias: I studied sports management and gained my first experience at sports rights marketing company “Infront” during my internship semester. That was very sales-oriented. I now work outside of sport in marketing and communication. And of course, my professional know-how has helped me to prepare presentations or improve the presentation of a club, for example.

Project-related commitment as the basis for implementing ideas in the association

Pascal: Has the project-related commitment been anchored in the association for a long time?

Tobias: During my FSJ period in 2009, there was a three-member board with a lot of tasks. The association was in a state of upheaval at the time and had to do a lot of political work. Back then, it was all about renovation measures and new functional buildings. In the meantime, many political issues have been resolved and the focus is clearly on implementing ideas. Now many people can help without being active on the board.

Pascal: Let's get into the topic of mission statements. Why don't you describe how you came up with the idea of developing a mission statement?

Tobias: I wanted to take care of marketing and sales. Even with 1,000 members, we see ourselves as a village club and sponsors are of course fundamental. Previously, there was a mixture of donations and sponsorship and there wasn't really a sustainable idea behind it. But a sports club in the south of Düsseldorf has more to offer than just holding out its hand. However, the sponsors lacked the fodder to convince me with content. It was about answering the question: What do we do differently from other clubs? First of all, I wanted to sharpen the club's focus on this point.

“We have always been a very family-oriented club”

Martin: Was there a starting point or was there a lack of ideas because the club was so unstructured?

Tobias: Of course there was an image of the association. There was always this village character with traditions such as the harvest festival. We've also always been a very family-oriented club. But these were all perceived perceptions. My aim was to find out in group work whether my feelings were correct or not.

Pascal: Then you just got started and were brave. How did you go about it? Was there a board decision?

Tobias: It was particularly courageous on the part of the Board. Nobody knew what the result would be. We were an initial group of 8 people from the Board and other voluntary areas of the association. We wanted everyone to integrate 4 people into the development of the mission statement. The people should be as diverse as possible: Young & old, male & female, member and non-member. In the end, we started with 30 people.

Martin: Which 8 people did you choose?

Tobias: There were 2 board members and 2 other people who had a very long-standing relationship with the club. And the other two had already done a lot of voluntary sponsorship work in the past and were close to the first men's team, the club's figurehead.

Pascal: Did you also involve the people of the village?

Tobias: As much as possible. One of the biggest problems was that we were perceived as just a soccer club. To be seen as a club as a whole, it is important to attract people who are not associated with the club.

Hard-working little helpers: How 30 people developed TSV Urdenbach's mission statement

Martin: A group size of 30 is difficult to manage. Opinions can differ widely and don't necessarily apply to the club as a whole. How did you organize it?

Tobias: We chose a digital start date. My colleague Michael Boll and I saw the same problem: You're not going to move a topic forward constructively with 30 people. We formed subgroups that we wanted to cover. For us, these were sustainability, club life, anti-racism and anti-violence. The groups were first familiarized with research work:

Research into the age structure in the club and in the region,
another group should compile which sports we offer and which are available in the surrounding area
and the third group should check whether there are sports that are not covered by anyone in the area but play a role in other regions.

Pascal: You were perceived exclusively as a soccer club, although you're not really that at all, right?

Tobias: Yes, that's right. We started a survey out of a group and bundled questions and did an online survey. 100 members and 40 non-members took part. We asked about attributes and how TSV is perceived. The results showed that most people perceive TSV as family-oriented, close to home and football-centric.

Pascal: Does the soccer focus influence current communication?

Tobias: Definitely. We have deliberately designed our new magazine so that there is less space for soccer results and match reports. After all, they are all discussed on social media. We want to tell stories about people in the club. But we're getting to the point where the other departments need to be just as motivated as the soccer department.

Findings from the survey results

Martin: Were there any surprises in the survey results or did you more or less expect them?

Tobias: A lot of things were in line with our assessment. It was exciting to see that over 50% of the members would like to have offers that go beyond pure sports activities. This confirmed the family character of the club and the generally high level of interest in club life. We also asked trainers and found that they felt more valued by their immediate environment than by the club.

Pascal: I'm interested in how you organized the meetings. Was there a moderator who recorded the content? And was there a guideline or did the groups have a free hand?

Tobias: The big meeting was mainly moderated by me. Each individual group was given a group leader. However, this was not intended to be hierarchical, but rather coordinative. We used a Google Drive to provide cross-group access to documents. We defined general goals and gave them to the groups. For example, between the 1st and 2nd meeting, the topic of research had to be completed.

Martin: You set small milestones and at some point you had your mission statement. How long did that take?

Tobias: We started at the end of October and had a result in April. There were digital meetings throughout, which was a problem. But I'm satisfied with the six-month duration.

Mission statement in the club: The 3 pillars of TSV Urdenbach

Martin: And what does your mission statement look like now?

Tobias: The mission statement comprises 3 pillars.

The first pillar is "Sport for all". This states that we offer everyone a sporting home. This is particularly aimed at people aged between 30 and 50, to whom we have not been able to offer much to date.

The 2nd pillar is called "Sustainable and socially active". We value sustainable and environmentally conscious social interaction. However, we also want to tackle the issue of physical and psychological violence through prevention protection concepts. It is important to us that there are contact persons in the association for this purpose.

The third pillar is called "In Urdenbach". This means that we are very proud of our Düsseldorf district, which has a lot of heart and offers a range of sports for everyone.

"We have gained new volunteers with the developed mission statement"

Martin: Have you collected key figures to check the measures or would you prefer to rely on your gut feeling?

Tobias: We don't want to rely on our gut feeling. But we are still stuck in the step before that. One of the reasons for this is that the people involved were informed in advance that they would no longer have any time commitments once the mission statement had been developed. We were able to recruit new volunteers with the mission statement we developed, but there are many areas that still need to be filled. We have set clear goals for quantification and realized that we are not yet as far as we would like to be in terms of short-term goals.

Pascal: How did the non-participating members react?

Tobias: Extremely positively. We deliberately said that we didn't want to turn everything inside out. There were a lot of good things that weren't getting enough coverage. We got to the heart of this content and achieved greater attention with a new website and a higher profile in the local press.

TSV Urdenbach: "Club with a heart"

Pascal: In the mission statement, you describe yourselves as an association with a heart. Was this term coined by the mission statement or were you already like that before?

Tobias: Urdenbach generally describes itself as a village with a heart. And this term "association with heart" had been buzzing around in my head since my FSJ. And we were of the opinion that if we use the term, we also want to mention the associated attributes.

Martin: How do you get the members excited about the new mission statement?

Tobias: That's a very difficult matter. We are still working on it in individual departments today. The enthusiasm was immediately noticeable on the Executive Board. So we first presented the mission statement to all department heads. Of course, the mission statement was also sent to all members with the opportunity to actively participate again if required. The new mission statement was then published via the press, social media channels and the website. We received a lot of positive feedback here. Now we need to focus more on implementation.

Martin: It didn't quite work for all departments. Did you approach people in the wrong way or do they simply have a negative attitude towards it?

Tobias: There is the problem that we have people in the department management who are extremely strong coaches and are well received by the training groups. These people take on their management role more or less involuntarily because they are already busy with sporting and social tasks. And they don't have the time to carry out actual department management tasks. We will organize a thank-you event for all volunteers to get together more often across all departments.

Pascal: Let's go back to the beginning. Now you have created attributes through the mission statement. Will marketing and sponsors be better for you now?

Tobias: The good thing was that I was able to provide support with a structure at the beginning. Part of this involved me wanting to create an individual sponsor presentation in which we introduce ourselves as a club on 3-4 pages. That alone helped to create an individual presentation that could be completed in just a few minutes.

How the mission statement ensured an increase in sponsors

Martin: Have you gained more sponsors?

Tobias: The sponsorship area has developed the best. We have divided the sponsors into three levels. We are now talking about premium partners, including 1894 partners - 1894 stands for our founding year - and team partners. Sponsors who have previously only donated jerseys are also one level higher. We are currently at 8 sponsors for the 1894 partners and next week it will even be double digits here.

Martin: Do the sponsors only come from Urdenbach or also from the wider region?

Tobias: There is almost no industry in Urdenbach. So we are taking a parallel path with the surrounding area in the south of Düsseldorf, which wants to be active for TSV. But there are also a lot of private individuals in Urdenbach who want to help with their company or personally. This has created a second pillar of sponsorship. At the start of the year at the match of the 1st men's team, we were able to bring together politicians and business people from the region and two former professionals from Fortuna Düsseldorf, who made the event exciting and thus brought added value for the entire club.

Martin: So you turned an actual weakness into a strength.

Tobias: The big advantage was that we created three levels. Ultimately, a lot of people end up in the middle of the sponsorship spectrum because most people don't want to invest money at a premium level for a village club. But a club like us only needs a few partners in the premium sector anyway.

What happens next? "Strengthening volunteering and making it more sustainable"

Pascal: New homepage, new magazine, new communication. What are the next steps for you?

Tobias: The crucial question is how the new board will be formed. Then it's important for us to go back to the vision and the measures. This involves two sports offers, at least one of which we want to test intensively. This concerns, for example, the "active school childcare" offer. We also want to strengthen volunteering and make sustainability more concrete.

Pascal: The mission statement will have to undergo a stress test at some point to see if anything can be added.

Tobias: The group has formulated clear goals in terms of membership numbers. And that's something we can measure ourselves against. We can also start the survey again to check.

Martin: Are you optimistic that you will be able to recruit enough volunteers for the measures?

Tobias: I am very confident. An organization chart has now been created that includes a coordinating board to reduce the workload in this area too. At the operational level, we are creating 7-8 sub-areas, which in turn will take care of sub-areas of the mission statement. This includes, for example, 2 people who are responsible for association events.

Tobias' most important success factors for a successful mission statement process

Martin: When you look back over the last few months: What are the three success factors that were decisive for the mission statement process in your association?

Tobias:

the openness of the Management Board.
the snowball effect, i.e. a few people who get the process rolling.
formulating concrete measures and measurable goals.

Martin: Finally, do you have any tips for nudging board members in the right direction?

Tobias: Of course, it depends on where the association currently stands. It is certainly helpful to simply ask them to get started and get going with a group. If the board signals that it doesn't want to deal with a mission statement, the upcoming benefits or the relief should not go unmentioned.