The Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute’s 2020-2021 Sport Organizations Survey asked administrators in sport organizations about perceptions about their organizational capacity, in terms of adequate human resources to fulfill the organization’s mandate and financial resources for sustainability. This study surveyed sport organizations at a national, provincial, territorial, and community level. In terms of human resource capacity, sport organizations were asked about their perceptions that their organization has sufficient staffing and human resources to fulfill its mandate of providing quality sport programs, related to:
- administrative staff;
- managerial staff;
- executive or board members;
- coaching, officiating, and other technical staff; and,
- volunteers.
Sufficient human resources
Generally speaking, between one-quarter and one-half of sport organizations report having sufficient staffing and human resources to provide quality programming to a great extent, and very few organizations (20% or less) say that do not have sufficient resources at all. Table 1 describes the findings in more detail.
Table 1: Percentage of sport organizations that indicate they collaborate with other organizations for the development of facilities and sport programming
| A great extent | Some extent | Not at all | Don’t know/not applicable | |
| Administrative staff | 35% | 42% | 13% | 10% |
| Managerial staff | 37% | 36% | 14% | 14% |
| Executive or Board members | 50% | 34% | 10% | 6% |
| Coaching, officiating, technical staff | 33% | 53% | 10% | 4% |
| Volunteers | 22% | 49% | 20% | 9% |
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey
Region – Organizational perception about staff or human resource capacity to provide quality sport programming does not differ regionally in comparison to the national average.
Organizational size – Organizations were categorized based on the number of registrants or participants that they serve (i.e., 150 or less registrants or participants and greater than 150). With this in mind, a greater proportion of larger organizations feel that they have sufficient managerial staff, executive, or board members to provide quality sport programming to a great extent, whereas there were no significant differences between smaller and larger organizations in terms of sufficiency of other types of human resources.
Figure 1: Percentage of organizations indicating sufficient human resources to provide quality sport programs by organizational size
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey
Sufficient financial resources
In the context of providing quality sport programs, sport organizations were also asked about their views on whether they had sufficient financial resources for:
- the organizational infrastructure on day-to-day activities;
- the governance of the organizations (e.g., Board of directors, committees);
- facilities and venues;
- the development of coaches and leaders;
- the development of athletes;
- media exposure, promotion and communications related activities;
- increasing the number of participants;
- gender equity initiatives;
- inclusion and accessibility;
- concussion or injury prevention, and return-to-play protocols;
- safe sport; and,
- new procedures implemented as a result of COVID-19 protocols.
Table 2 describes the ratings of each of these factors. Notably, a sizeable percentage of organizations report not having sufficient financial resources for key activities like supporting facilities and venues, developing coaches, leaders and athletes, for increasing the number of participants, or for promotional efforts.
Table 2: Percentage of organizations indicating sufficient financial resources to provide quality sport programs
| Support of the: | A great extent | Some extent | Not at all | Don’t know/not applicable |
| Organizational capacity | ||||
| Organizational infrastructure | 20% | 59% | 16% | 5% |
| Governance of the organization | 31% | 38% | 19% | 12% |
| Facilities and venues | ||||
| Support of facilities and venues | 14% | 47% | 29% | 10% |
| Development | ||||
| Development of coaches and leaders | 13% | 51% | 29% | 7% |
| Development of athletes | 14% | 49% | 30% | 6% |
| Promotion and recruitment | ||||
| Media exposure, promotion and communications-related activities | 9% | 38% | 46% | 7% |
| Recruitment of participants | 11% | 44% | 41% | 4% |
| Equity, inclusion, access | ||||
| Gender equity initiatives | 27% | 34% | 22% | 17% |
| Inclusion and accessibility | 22% | 37% | 27% | 14% |
| Safety | ||||
| Concussion, injury prevention, return-to-play protocols | 29% | 38% | 19% | 14% |
| Safe sport | 43% | 41% | 11% | 5% |
| New procedures implemented as a result of COVID-19 protocols | 29% | 50% | 17% | 4% |
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey
Region – There is only one significant regional difference related to perceptions about sufficient resources; compared to the national average, a higher percentage of sport organizations in Ontario indicate that they do not have sufficient financial resources for the development of coaches and leaders.
Organizational size – Sufficient financial capacity to provide quality sport programming does not differ by the size of the organization; large organizations (e.g., 150 participants or less) report similar levels of sufficient financial resources as do smaller organizations.
Sufficient trained staff
Sport organizations were asked to indicate whether they had a sufficient number of certified coaches and officials to operate their different levels of sport programs (i.e., recreational or introduction to sport, competitive and high performance sport). More than half of organizations (64%) said they had a sufficient number of certified coaches for their recreational or introduction to sport programs, whereas less than half of organizations (48%) felt they had a sufficient number of certified coaches for competitive and high performance sport. When considering certified officials, 37% of organizations said they had a sufficient number to operate recreation or introduction to sport programs and fewer (28%) reported this for competitive or high performance sport. A small proportion of sport organizations said they had either a sufficient number of certified coaches or officials for para-sport to run sport programs at either levels (See Figure 2).
Figure 2: Percentage of sport organizations indicating they have a sufficient number of certified coaches or officials.
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey
Region– This study found no statistically significant differences across regions in the availability of sufficient numbers of certified coaches or officials.
Figure 3: Percentage of organizations indicating they have sufficient number of certified coaches and officials by region
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey; *Data for the Atlantic and North suppressed due to cell size
Organization size– The availability of a sufficient number of coaches and officials did not vary significantly between large and small organizations.
Figure 4: Percentage of organizations indicating they have sufficient number of certified coaches and officials by organization size
Source: CFLRI, 2020-2021 Sport Organization survey
Production of this summary has been made possible through a financial contribution from the Government of Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent their views.
