AYSA Mission Statement
AYSA is founded on Christian principles and exists to promote the highest ideals of teamwork, sportsmanship, honesty, trust and respect for authority with the specific purpose of influencing kids and adults to become better individuals.
AYSA Vision
AYSA is committed to the healthy growth and development of each child in a vibrant family-friendly community, and a path for excellence and continued growth of organized youth team sports.
2009 BUSINESS PLAN
2009 GENERAL OVERVIEW
The Abilene Youth Sports Authority (AYSA) originated in 2004 and is the result of a grand vision to create a centralized community resource to facilitate a healthy and growing environment for organized youth sports in Abilene and the Big Country.
Increased buy-in and participation from local youth leagues plays a critical role in a shared vision for improving the culture and growth of our youth sports programs. During the last quarter of 2008 AYSA conducted meetings with youth league leadership to determine their challenges and needs. In 2009 AYSA will expand current services and develop new services that will assist with the most common areas of league interests and needs, and expand the mission and purposes of AYSA.
MAKING YOUTH SPORTS AVAILABLE TO MORE AREA CHILDREN
Local leagues have expressed great interest in being more involved with the AYSA Website and Locker Room Newsletter as ways to more effectively promote their leagues to the community. We expect the scope and reach of both our website and newsletter to experience a 50% growth in 2009.
HELPING YOUTH SPORTS TEACH MORE THAN JUST A GAME
There is a shared concern about providing quality coaching, and addressing problematic behaviors in an effort to improve the culture of local youth sports. Every league we met with said they would gladly participate in coaching clinics conducted by AYSA. Developing high quality, comprehensive coaching clinics for the youth leagues will be a major priority for AYSA in 2009.
HOSTING SPECIAL COMMUNITY EVENTS AND YOUTH SPORTS TOURNAMENTS
For four years AYSA has hosted the most consistently successful and growing annual youth sports events of their kind in the area. These Special Events and Tournaments are vital to providing funding for AYSA operations, and also provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic benefit to the community.
AYSA will continue the established efforts that have brought excellence to our current events and explore opportunities to add exciting new events that bring revenues to AYSA, benefit our local families, and bring tourism and recognition to the community of Abilene.
The key to success is to stay true to our mission of having a positive impact in the lives of children and their parents through quality youth sports programs and events.
2009 BUSINESS PLAN OVERVIEW
The following Goals and Objectives as listed in this overview are directive by nature. Detailed Action Plans will be presented for Board input as they are developed for each Objective following these 2009 timelines.
FINANCIAL
Goal: To increase revenues generated by AYSA events and services in order to create a stronger balance with charitable contributions, for the long-term financial success of AYSA.
AYSA is blessed by the visionary charitable contributions of Founding Partner businesses and this revenue has provided much of the operating capital for the foundational planning of the overall vision of AYSA. Earned revenues from AYSA events and services have continued to grow and currently provide 51% of the annual budget. The focus for 2009 is to increase earned revenues to be able to service 65% of budgeted expenses.
Objective 1: Increase annual earned revenues from AYSA events and services by 20%.
A combination of improved expense management and growth in participants and sponsors will provide increased revenues from our repeating events.
More efforts will be dedicated to generating advertising revenues from the expanded AYSA Website and Newsletter. Plans also include creating and implementing 1-2 new AYSA events in 2009 that will generate additional earned revenues to reach our funding goals.
Deadline: Monthly - Beginning in January 2009
Objective 2: Revise the AYSA annual partnership giving programs to expand our base of charitable giving support.
The AYSA Founding Partner program officially began in 2005 with 16 local organizations agreeing to a 5-year partnership to financially support the vision of AYSA. These organizations and others that have joined since 2005, currently totaling 31 Founding Partners, will continue to be involved and recognized in new and creative ways, exclusive to the Founding Partners, for their pioneer efforts in establishing AYSA. 2009 represents the final year of commitment for these initial 16 Founding Partners, so it is important to address new partnership programs to continue growing our charitable giving program.
The long term financial strength of the charitable giving program we develop and implement is built on the expansion of additional giving levels that will make partnership available to a wider scope of organizations and individuals. Our goal is to have a minimum total of 60 contributing partners, including our continuing Founding Partners, confirmed by the end of 2009. The detailed plan will be presented for review at the August Board meeting.
Deadline: August 2009
ADMINISTRATION
Goal: To become the recognized central provider of recreational youth league advertising and marketing and coach training.
We have seen over the last 4 years that the most accepted and appreciated services we can offer the current local leagues at this point is advertising their programs to the public and assisting with communications to their league families.
There is also a shared concern throughout the leagues about providing quality coaching, and addressing problematic behaviors in an effort to improve the culture of local youth sports.
Objective 1: The employment of a year-round part time office staff person.
This staff person is desperately needed as the leagues are asking us to be more involved in their programs. This person will help with the daily activities to include league communications and information gathering, website administration, newsletter publishing, special events planning and coordination, advertising, and other office duties as needed.
Having this additional staff person will allow the Executive Director to spend more time and effort in developing new Sponsor/Partner programs, Advertising Programs, Special Event Planning, League Relationships, and other strategic planning projects.
Deadline: January 2009
Objective 2: Increase circulation of the LOCKER ROOM NEWS to include all families registered with the 16 local recreational youth leagues.
The LOCKER ROOM NEWS newsletter has quickly become the most effective communication tool for local leagues to promote their programs, as well as for AYSA to share our vision and plans for a growing, vibrant youth sports community to a target audience of over 3,400 youth sports families which include community leaders, business owners, employees, and the volunteer moms and dads.
Our league meetings have uncovered hundreds of new families to be added to the mailing list, and we expect the distribution list to top 4,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2009. We will devote even more focus and time to publishing and distributing this newsletter as it is currently the most effective tool to assist us with league relations and community awareness of AYSA.
Deadline: April 2009.
Objective 3: Complete implementation of the AYSA website administrative functions.
Our meetings with the leagues have also uncovered additional ways we can use our website as the central source of internet youth sports information. The new website administration functions will provide daily update capabilities and make the site more interactive and beneficial for local leagues and league families. This increased daily activity on the AYSA website will also help generate increased online advertising revenues.
Deadline: June 2009
Objective 4: Develop and conduct first-class Coach Training programs specific to individual youth sports leagues.
The top need most commonly expressed by the leagues in all sports is the need of quality training for the volunteer youth coaches. Comprehensive coach training gives AYSA the greatest opportunity to have the most positive impact in the quality of current youth leagues.
We have already established a very successful basic model with our June football clinics in partnership with FCA, and our league meetings have opened the doors for other leagues to become more involved in training clinics specific to their sports.
Through partnerships with qualified instructors, our clinics will challenge and equip the coaches to become better role models, provide quality instruction on safety and first-aid, provide general and age/skill specific coaching techniques, and include coaching support materials.
In 2009 we will focus on 2 specific coach clinics: 1) More fully developing and expanding the existing June football coach clinic to include participation from all teams in the youth football league, and 2) Developing a baseball clinic that will provide valuable coaching tools and help the local leagues meet the education requirements of their national Little League organization.
Deadline: February 2009
Objective 5: Host League Registration Days for youth leagues
We are working with the Little League District V Office to coordinate a Registration Day at the Mall of Abilene in February. The role of AYSA is to coordinate the facilities and advertising for this event. This event will serve as a model for AYSA-coordinated registration days for other leagues, showing the leagues the benefits of a central coordinator and promoting AYSA's league involvement to the community.
Deadline: February 2009
Objective 6: Develop a program of quantitative measurements that show the positive impact of AYSA services in the community
It is important for AYSA to show the business community the measurable impacts of their investments in AYSA. While it can be difficult to measure improvements in "quality" that many of our efforts are focused on, showing growth in numbers is an effective way to also show expansion of the culture that we are striving for.
We will develop a baseline that allows us to track information specific to the focus of our mission and our efforts and effective ways to communicate these successes to our partners and the community.
Deadline: August 2009
SPECIAL EVENTS / TOURNAMENTS
Goal: To become the recognized coordinator of sports-themed family special events and youth sports tournaments.
2009 will be the fourth year for several community events and youth tournaments hosted by AYSA. In addition to growing the current events, we will continue to look at hosting other community events and youth tournaments, as time and facilities will allow.
Objective 1: Increase attendance and revenue for the fourth annual West Texas Sports & Fitness EXPO
2009 will be the fourth year for the highly successful EXPO. We will have a strong focus on family fitness and childhood obesity at this year's event. Event advertising continues to become more effective and with the addition of the 3-Point Basketball Championships and participation by the new Abilene Professional Indoor Football Team, we expect close to 6,000 people in attendance. Our goal is to raise over $25,000 for AYSA operations.
Deadline: February 21, 2009
Objective 2: Hosting Prime Time Sports Boys & Girls Basketball Tournaments
Our relationship with Prime Time Sports, as a host organization continues to strengthen as we have now conducted 8 extremely successful basketball tournaments in Abilene. Limited facilities continue to hinder our efforts to grow these events, or schedule additional basketball events with Prime Time.
We plan to add a new function with AYSA acting as Tournament Directors for these Prime Time events in 2009, which should help us create additional revenues for AYSA. Our goal is to increase AYSA revenues to $5,000 per event.
Deadline: April 2009 & June 2009
Objective 3: Second Annual AYSA High School Boys Basketball Team Camp in Abilene
Our first team camp in 2008 included 17 teams from across the Big Country. The event was extremely successful, with several teams signing up for our 2009 camp before they left the 2008 camp. We will easily have 24 teams in 2009, with four of the local high school coaches actively involved in planning and promoting the event. With increased sponsor participation we expect to increase AYSA net revenues to at least $5,000 for this event.
Deadline: June 2009
Objective 4: Develop additional AYSA Special Events/Tournaments
Using the systems we have developed to produce excellence in our current events, we will explore opportunities to add exciting new events that bring revenues to AYSA, benefit our local families, and bring tourism and recognition to the community of Abilene.
The first two events we are considering include 1) An Exhibition Football Game with NFL Alumni in partnership with Skilz Skoolz that we will use as a fundraiser for AYSA and the youth leagues and 2) A Select Youth Baseball Tournament in the fall or winter of 2009. Details will be provided for Board input.
Deadline: March 2009
2009 BUSINESS PLAN SUMMARY
We know that kids love to play team sports and can learn so many important life lessons such as teamwork, discipline, sacrifice, and winning and losing with grace, but at the same time we see growing examples of poor sportsmanship from parents, fans, and participants.
AYSA is strengthening our commitment to being an agent of change and growth, working closer with the current local youth recreational leagues as well as pioneering new youth and family sporting events that promote active lifestyles, physical and emotional well-being, family activities, and most importantly the development of strong personal character.
While a sports complex can be an incredible tool to assist with the purposes of AYSA, we are remaining steadfast to our cause, which is to create a youth sports environment that will help develop kids into healthy, responsible, and successful adults!
Introducing new concepts and visions to a community takes much time and effort, and we are very excited about our growing relationships with the current leagues and the plans we share to provide better youth sports programs to our community through these new and expanded cooperative efforts.
We believe 2009 will be the most successful year yet for AYSA in our efforts to make a meaningful positive impact in the lives of youth sports families in our community