Strategic Plan

New Zealand Ultimate is about to embark on a Strategic Planning exercise to be conducted over the summer period and finalized for adoption at the AGM in April 2009. This document is the start of that process. It will outline the history of New Zealand Ultimate as an organization, the need for a strategic plan and also outlines the process that the Board of New Zealand Ultimate will be leading in order to produce a robust and lasting document to direct our sport in the years to come.

History of NZU

Ultimate as a sport has always been run under the umbrella of the New Zealand Flying Disc Association – a legal body set up to run all sorts of flying disc sports in New Zealand and affiliated to the World Flying Disc Federation. This worked very well in the beginning phases of the sports in New Zealand, as many people involved played a number of disc sports.

As Ultimate has grown, more players have specialized in this particular disc sport. This led the NZFDA to set up the Ultimate Players Committee, a dedicated group of Ultimate players within the NZFDA who were responsible for running the Ultimate side of the NZFDA. In 2005, it was decided by the players, led by members of the UPC, that Ultimate needed its own organization, focused solely on the sport of Ultimate to better administer and lead the sport. New Zealand Ultimate was therefore setup for this purpose. New Zealand Ultimate is an Incorporated Society, registered with the societies office of the Ministry of Economic Development. This means that it is an organisation ‘owned’ and run by its members – the players. NZU is affiliated or recognised by other important sporting bodies, through its affiliation to the NZFDA (although we have split from the NZFDA in organizational terms, we still work closely with them). These bodies include SPARC (the government sports agency) and WFDF.

The Need for a Plan

The process of setting up New Zealand and getting its affiliations correct has taken a significant amount of time, but has finally completed. We have now reached the stage where we have this great tool and need to work out as a national group, how best to use it. That is the purpose of this strategic planning exercise. We have an organization dedicated to making Ultimate in New Zealand better, but we need to work out how this is to be done.

What should we focus on? What are the things that we need to accomplish? How should we raise money and where should we spend it? These are questions that will be answered over the next few months.

The Strategic Plan will be an extremely important document, not just for this organization, but for all ultimate-related organisations and people involved in the sport. For this reason, it needs to be a document that we all support. The ‘Buy-in’ from regional bodies and players is imperative. NZU itself is a very small organization, with only a 5 person board and 4 volunteer management ‘staff’. As such, it will always struggle to achieve large gains on a national scale. The work undertaken by regional bodies such as Auckland Ultimate, Wellington Disc Sports, Manawatu Ultimate Association, Canterbury Frisbee Flyers Club, and others, is extremely valuable. If all of these organizations were working off the same playbook, the gains to the sport could be great. For this reason, consultation in the drawing up of a plan needs to be widespread and thorough. There will be several opportunities to have input into this plan at a regional level, and the draft plan will be tabled for everyone’s feedback before final adoption.

With a widely accepted document in place, regional bodies, administrators and those associated with NZU will be able to make decisions that complement each other and we will be working together to achieve similar goals.

The Process

The board of NZU is proposing a three step process to achieve this plan – based on a strategic planning workshop document provided by SPARC.

Step 1: Produce a mission statement.

We need to figure out exactly why NZU is in existence and what we want it to accomplish. We will be holding brainstorming sessions around the country, as well as taking feedback via email from areas with a smaller population, around these ideas and the board will then pool all ideas and endeavor to produce a single statement that defines NZU.

Step 2: Strategic Goals

Another round of brainstorming sessions will be held – this time focused around more specific strategic goals. The thinking will be based on “Given this mission statement, what are the long-term goals of our organization?” The results of these sessions, plus feedback from smaller areas and specific people will again be compiled by the NZU board to form several strategic goals.

Step 3: The plan

The Board will then work to produce a plan on how to achieved the goals identified in step 2. This will be the document that we are all going to be working on. It will likely go through a couple of drafts within the Board, before a draft is released for public debate and feedback. After the feedback period is over, final edits will be made and a final copy will be circulated prior to the AGM at Women’s and Men’s nationals in April 2009 in Wellington.

The last step will be the adoption of the plan at the AGM, and it will then be the responsibility of the 2009 NZU board, regional bodies and all of us to work within this plan to make our sport better.

Timings

• Late October – Initial Meetings for Mission Statement
• End of October – Board to compile feedback into Mission Statement
• Mid November – Meetings for Strategic Goals
• Late November – Board to compile feedback to produce Strategic Goals
• December – Draft framework produced for comment at Mixed Nationals.
• January – Further work. Draft plan available for comment.
• February – comments received. Further refinement.
• Two weeks before AGM – Final Strategic plan available.
• AGM – Start plan adopted.

The board looks forward to working with you over the coming months to improve the administration of the sport. Please get involved and ensure your ideas are heard.