Sports club development plan: free template and how to track it

A sports club development plan is quick to write and even quicker to forget. This guide shows you how to structure one, gives you a free template to start from, and explains how to see each season whether your goals are getting closer.

What goes into a sports club development plan?

A development plan, sometimes called a strategic plan, is the multi-year plan for the whole club. It answers three questions: where are we now, where do we want to go, and how will we know along the way whether we are on track? A plan you can actually follow has these parts:

1. Where we stand now. The baseline: how many members, teams, coaches, volunteers and court hours the club has today, with a source for every number.
2. Mission, vision and values. The mission says why the club exists and who it is for. The vision describes where the club will be at the end of the period, concretely enough that you can tell by then whether you made it. The values describe how you treat each other, in the gym and beyond.
3. Strengths and weaknesses. Strengths and weaknesses are about the club itself. Opportunities and threats come from outside: court time, the local council or city, schools, other clubs.
4. Goals per area. Teams and youth, coaches and staff, facilities, volunteers, finances, and board and communication. One to three goals per area, each with actions, an owner and a deadline.
5. Measuring and reviewing. For each goal the baseline, the target and the figure after every season, plus who keeps an eye on the plan.

What each age group learns at practice does not belong in this plan. You work out that pathway in a separate volleyball curriculum, usually written by the technical committee. The club development plan is about numbers, people, courts and money.

Sports club development plan template: free download

The template is free, with no account and no email address required. You are free to use, copy and adapt it, even if your club does not use Koach. The examples come from volleyball, but the structure works for any sports club.

• Sports club development plan (PDF): a four-page A4 workbook to print and fill in by hand.
• Sports club development plan (Word): for writing out the plan in full, with grey guidance text in every chapter that you replace with your own words.
• Sports club development plan (Excel): your goals and the figure for each season, plus an action list. Progress and status calculate themselves.

What you will find on the four pages of the PDF:

• Page 1, where we stand now. Fields for the club, the period, who wrote the plan and when it was approved. Below that, a table with twelve topics, from total members and youth members (under an age you choose) to attendance at training, new members and members who left, with the columns Now and Source or note.
• Page 2, mission, strengths and weaknesses. Boxes for mission, vision and values, and for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• Page 3, goals per area. The six areas one below the other, with columns for a measurable goal, the actions, who does it and when it must be done.
• Page 4, measuring and reviewing. A tracking table with eight example indicators and columns for the baseline, the goal, four seasons and the source, plus a table for the review after each season.

The Word version has the same chapters plus an introduction. The Excel file has three sheets: How it works, Goals and Actions. On Goals you put each goal on its own row with the baseline, the goal and the figure after every season, and Excel works out the progress and the status: achieved, in progress or worse. Baseline 4 teams, goal 8, 6 after the first season: you are halfway there. On Actions you track who does what, with the status Planned, Started, Done or Stopped.

How to fill in your development plan

1. Start with the numbers, not the vision. Fill in page 1 first, with a source for every figure: the membership list, the attendance sheets, the court schedule. Without a baseline, two seasons from now you will not know whether anything improved.
2. Do not write the mission and vision on your own. Get coaches, members and parents involved. A vision that only the board knows never makes it to the gym.
3. Make every goal measurable. Not "more coaches", but "within two seasons every youth team has two coaches". A number and a deadline, and no more than three goals per area.
4. Put every goal in the tracking table. One indicator per goal, with the same source as the baseline. That way you measure the same way every season.
5. Set a fixed review moment. After every season someone updates the figures, and the board or the members' meeting discusses what needs adjusting.

Step 4 is the part you have to repeat every season, and it is where a plan most easily stalls. Gathering the figures is work every single time: chasing attendance sheets from every coach, counting how many teams are running, checking who is still coaching. That is exactly the part a system your coaches already use can take over.

Which goals in your development plan can you track with data?

Not every goal can be measured with figures from the teams. Broadly, there are two kinds:

• Sporting goals about teams, players, attendance and coaches. Those figures come from the teams themselves: a coach who takes attendance produces the attendance figure.
• Goals about members, money and facilities, such as new members and members who left, sponsorship income or court hours. Those come from your membership records, the annual accounts and the court schedule.

You can count the sporting figures yourself and enter them in the Excel file, or read them off in a club platform your coaches already work in.

We make Koach, so read the right-hand column as our own description. Checked in the app in October 2026.

Our honest advice: use both. The template remains the plan itself, including the goals about members, money and courts. Koach Club supplies the sporting figures your coaches already record, so after every season you copy them over instead of hunting them down.

How to read the sporting figures in Koach Club

Koach is an app for volleyball coaches. The Club plan adds the Club dashboard, which you open from Profile. Everything it contains is covered in the guide to your club dashboard. For a development plan, four places matter.

Teams, players and attendance: the Overview

At the top of the Overview tab are three numbers for the whole club: the number of teams, the number of players and how many of those players have their own account. Below that, each team has a row with its players, linked accounts, attendance and the number of upcoming practices and matches. Attendance only counts this season's sessions where attendance was recorded. You can copy the number of teams straight into your tracking table. For the row Average attendance at training you get a percentage per team; the club-wide average you work out yourself.

Teams side by side: the Club report

With Club and at least two teams that you coach yourself, Profile also shows the Club report: those teams one below the other, with the number of players, matches won and lost, attendance and the top scorer for the current season. Export club report (CSV) pulls the same rows into Excel, with the columns Team, Players, Played, W, L, Turnout % and Top scorer. You can put those right next to your tracking table. There is more on this overview in managing multiple teams with the club report.

Coaches per team: Export everything

At the bottom of the Overview is the Export everything block. The Export button gives you a single ZIP file with all of the club's teams, players, practices, attendance, session reports, notes and ratings as CSV files. teams.csv lists the number of players and coaches per team: the source for a goal like "every youth team has two coaches". Only the Club manager and a Board member can export, because the file contains members' personal data, including data on minors. What else is in it is covered in the club export.

Supporting your coaches: the signals

A goal under Coaches and staff is often about support: no coach left to cope on their own. That is what the signals in the Team log tab are for. At the top you see how many of your teams need attention, and for each team why: low attendance, no report from the last practice, an upcoming practice without a plan, players absent three practices in a row, notes waiting for follow-up, or no practice scheduled. The Club manager, a Board member and the Technical manager see this block. How to read it is explained in the signals block.

What Koach Club does not do

• No development plan in the app. Koach has no place for a mission, vision or goals and does not calculate progress per goal. That is what the template is for.
• No financial planning. No budget, annual accounts or sponsorship overview. Under Contributions you only track who still owes what; Koach does not collect payments.
• No membership administration. Koach only knows the players who are on a team. Keep tracking new members and members who leave wherever you do now.
• No coaching qualifications. Koach knows how many coaches a team has, not which qualifications they hold.
• Attendance only where it is recorded. If a team does not record attendance, that team has no attendance figure.
• Volleyball only. At a multi-sport club, Koach covers the volleyball section, not the other sports.

Who is Koach Club for, and what does it cost?

Koach Club suits a volleyball club with several teams that wants to track the sporting goals in its development plan without collecting attendance sheets every season. The condition is that your coaches use the app and record attendance. It is not a fit if you are mainly looking for membership administration or a finance system, or if your teams do not work in the app: then the Excel file remains the best place.

Club costs €9.99 per month for the whole club, or €8.33 per month billed yearly, with unlimited teams and coaches on the club account. Players and parents use Koach for free. In the App Store and on Google Play you pay the store price in your own currency. Club has no free trial: leave your details on the clubs page and we will set up your club together with you. All prices are on the pricing page. For everything else on the board's list at the start of a season, see the volleyball season checklist.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Volleyball curriculum: free club template, and how to track it The club dashboard for your volleyball club: everything in one place Club export: all your club's data in a single ZIP

Browse 200 volleyball drills with animations Download a complete practice plan of 8 to 28 weeks