ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of non-governmental organisations in promoting a sports development agenda in the UK. In drawing examples from significant voluntary sport providers some of the key contemporary challenges for sport management professionals are identified and interrogated, and the (inter)relationships with key public sector sporting organisations examined. At the outset it should be recognised that one of the defining characteristics of what is usually termed the ‘voluntary sector’, within which non-governmental organisations for sport operate, is its size, complexity, and diversity. As Hoye and Cuskelly (2007, pp. 7-8) note, ‘It is somewhat difficult to ascertain how many nonprofit [or voluntary] sport organisations there are within the sporting system of any individual country’. The size of the sector is highlighted by The Leisure Industries and Research Centre (LIRC). Research by the LIRC in 2003 estimates that there are some 106 000 volunteer-run sports clubs in England in addition to regional and national governing bodies of sport (quoted in Hoye and Cuskelly, 2007, p. 8). Therefore, the usual caveats apply here in as much as that it is not possible to provide an exhaustive consideration of all the different types of non-governmental organisations involved in the sports development field.
