The Club Toolkit Desk
Practical writing for the people running grassroots clubs — committee secretaries, treasurers and webmasters
Practical writing for the people running grassroots clubs — websites, comms, sponsorship, fundraising, the dull-but-vital admin that keeps a club alive.
Remembrance Weekend at Your Club: The Silence, the Poppies and the Collection, Sorted This Week
Remembrance Sunday is 8 November and Armistice Day is Wednesday 11 November. How to run a proper minute's silence, what's allowed on kit, how to collect for the Poppy Appeal the right way, and a 20-minute checklist for club secretaries.
The Volunteer Thank-You Box: How to Thank the People Who Keep Your Club Running (Without Making It Awkward)
Sport volunteering is still 1.3 million people down on 2016-17, and fundraising volunteers are leaving fastest. How to run a clean members' collection, what the club itself can safely give, and a six-week plan to the Christmas do.
Safeguarding on Show: Put Your Welfare Officer Where Parents Can Actually Find Them
Every affiliated club must have a safeguarding policy and a welfare officer. Far fewer publish either where a worried parent can find them. What The FA actually requires (checked 23 Oct 2026), the nine things a club safeguarding page needs, where to put it, and what you must never publish.
Funding Watch: Every Grant a Grassroots Club Can Still Apply For This Winter (and the Real Deadlines)
Only one hard grant deadline matters for most grassroots clubs this winter — Cash4Clubs, 5pm on 1 January 2027. Everything else is rolling, so your real deadline is when you need the money minus the funder's decision time. Six funds, checked on the funders' own pages, with a two-hour committee plan.
From 30 October, Meta Can Train Its AI on Your Club Website. Here's the 20-Minute Fix
Meta's new Commercial Terms take effect on 30 October and give it written permission to crawl the websites linked to your club's Facebook Page and train Meta AI on what it finds. There's no opt-out switch. Here's the two-line robots.txt fix, what it can't stop, and the real protection: not publishing what you wouldn't want copied.
Short of Referees? What the FA's New National Refereeing Curriculum Means for Your Club
The FA's new National Refereeing Curriculum rebuilds what happens after a referee qualifies — Foundation to Excel, with modules on dissent, match control and wellbeing. Here's what changed, what the FA Referee Course still costs, and a six-step plan for clubs that want to grow their own officials this winter.
Blur Before You Post: The Club Volunteer's Guide to Junior Photos on Social Media
Junior football is the best content a club has — and the easiest way to cause a safeguarding problem. What the FA's photography guidance actually requires, a quiet no-photo list, when to blur versus skip a shot, three free face-blur tools, and a one-page photo policy you can adopt this month.
Cooling-Off Periods, Ten-Match Bans and a Record 41,500 Referees: What the FA's Discipline Report Means for Your Club
The FA's 2025-26 Grassroots Behaviour and Discipline Report is out: 90.5% of matches marked good, offences against referees down, a record 41,500 officials — but discrimination reports are rising. What's new for 2026-27, from ten-match minimum bans to national cooling-off periods, and five things every committee should do now.
Before You Hand Your Club's Admin to an AI Agent: A Volunteer's Safety Checklist
Last week a stranger's words in a public web form steered Salesforce's AI agent into leaking data. If it can happen to Agentforce, it can happen to the AI helper wired into your club inbox. An eight-step checklist any committee can run in thirty minutes.
Teamer Alternatives: Choosing Your Club's Next Team App Before 5 October
Teamer switches off on 5 October and most "best alternative" articles are written by the alternatives. Here's the no-horse-in-the-race version: what Spond, Pitchero, Mingle Sport and ClubZap actually cost, and which fits a one-team Sunday side versus a 20-team junior club.
The Shoebox Problem: Club Expense Tracking That Doesn't Eat Your Treasurer Alive
Somewhere in your clubhouse is a carrier bag of receipts nobody wants to open. Here's the capture-at-the-moment workflow that fixes club expense tracking for good — a phone, a dedicated receipts thread, and a 20-minute monthly pass — plus the record-keeping rules that make it stick.
Teamer Is Shutting Down on 5 October — Your Club's Four-Week Migration Plan
Teamer closes for good on 5 October 2026 — and there are no export tools, so anything you haven't copied out by hand goes with it. Here's the four-week plan: rescue your data, choose the replacement with your eyes open, and move your people before the lights go off.
The Club Policy Pack: Every Document Your Committee Actually Needs, Built in One Afternoon
Businesses pay compliance platforms thousands for their paperwork. Your club's version is six documents, most of them free — and with the right templates (and a careful hand on the AI tiller) a committee can build the whole pack in one afternoon.
When Someone Asks ChatGPT About Football Near Them, Does Your Club Exist?
More than half of UK adults now use AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini — and plenty of them ask it where to play, watch and volunteer. Here's the 20-minute audit that tells you whether AI can see your club, and the fixes that cost nothing.
Vetting Volunteer Coaches Without the Paper Mountain: Where Video Screening Fits — and Where Only a DBS Will Do
New season, new faces on the touchline. Here's what the FA actually requires before anyone coaches your kids — and how a borrowed trick from the hiring world can tighten up the bit most clubs do worst.
The five pages every non-league club website gets wrong
Out-of-date fixtures, a 2019 committee list, no directions and a contact form nobody reads — the five website pages that quietly cost clubs players, fans and sponsors, and the ten-minute fixes.