By Shelba Waldron - Director of Club Education and Outreach, USA Gymnastics

USA Gymnastics has released its Member Club Best Practices Toolkit that takes a look at best practices within the gymnastics and youth sports environment. The toolkit is a comprehensive resource intended to help support member clubs as they seek opportunities to strengthen their business practices, while creating a fun and safe club environment. The Best Practices are based on seven areas of focus:

1. People/Human Resource Practices
2. Athlete Wellness, Injury Prevention, and Injury Response
3. Communication
4. Diversity and Inclusion
5. Environmental Safety
6. Prevention of Abuse and Misconduct
7. Reporting and Responding

Within the toolkit is a self-assessment, a voluntary tool designed to help clubs identify strengths and challenges in current business operations. The Club Assessment tool provides a comprehensive breakdown of each best practice and will allow the club to practice self-evaluation on each area of focus.

This self-evaluation will help the club establish a baseline to determine where they are excelling and/or identify areas of opportunity. The assessment also provides resources and action plans based upon the identified needs. USA Gymnastics Member Club Best Practices contains seven areas of focus. The club assessment tool can help:

• Identify gaps in the areas of human resources and risk management
• Increase confidence of organizational safety with families
• Improve organizational learning and knowledge
• Set expectations with management, staff, parents, and athletes
• Develop a holistic vision of club culture
• Create action plans

We encourage club owners, club management and coaches to explore the Toolkit and feel free to reach out to Shelba Waldron at swaldron@usagym.org with any questions. To access the toolkit, please click here.