Values, Vision, Mission

BC Ultimate Society
MISSION & Strategy Development

Introduction
Purposes of the Society
The Structure of Strategic Statements
Values

Introduction

Sport organizations like BC Ultimate, composed largely of volunteers, representing a broad and diverse membership, routinely faces challenges around communication, leadership turnover, and self-direction. If such a Society is to advance the status quo, its governance must be dealt with purposefully, with vision, and a long-term plan to achieve its goals. It must know, specifically and profoundly, why it exists, what it values, and how to serve its members. These understandings must guide the Society forward, and they must survive generations of leaders to have an impact.

This document serves to commit these ideas to writing.

This document centralizes and explains the strategic statements of the British Columbia Ultimate Society. It is an instrument intended to facilitate discussion and decision-making, and also to inform and to provide added transparency to the membership. It provides a common understanding by which programmes are conceived, directed and executed. This is a living document, and it will be added to and modified at each stage as the Society builds on it.

Purposes of the Society

The British Columbia Ultimate Society was incorporated in 2012 with the following purposes codified in its bylaws. These purposes are alterable provisions under the BC Society Act. They provide an elementary foundation on which additional strategy and vision can be elaborated. They are repeated here for reference:

To work in conjunction with member organizations, teams and individuals to foster, develop, and grow the sport of Ultimate in all its forms throughout British Columbia;

 

To provide a means to facilitate positive and proactive communications with the greater Ultimate community;

 

To promote the ideals of sportsmanship and Spirit of the Game and to encourage a positive experience by everyone who plays the sport of Ultimate;

 

To work with other governing bodies and organizations to achieve the goals of the Society and for the betterment of the sport of Ultimate – BCUS Constitution and Bylaws 2017

The Structure of Strategic Statements

This document will contain a hierarchy of statements that build on their precedents, moving from abstract to most concrete. The values, vision, and mission of BC Ultimate – the principal content of this reference — are indicated in blue in the figure below. These are the most lasting, most cerebral syntheses of the Society’s intentions. They inform the choices of success factors and goals (in green) — yardsticks by which progress is measured, and which can potentially change over the course of a few years. Lastly, in orange and red, we list the strategies and activities — the operations of the Society executed upon the strategic foundation. The latter statements will appear in a separate long-term strategic plan and in annual plans.

Figure 1 - The hierarchy of strategic statements. Blue indicates high-level purposes, green indicates metrics for success, and orange/red indicate executables. orange/red indicate executables.
Figure 1 – The hierarchy of strategic statements. Blue indicates high-level purposes, green indicates metrics for success, and orange/red indicate executables.

As the Society advances through this hierarchy, and modifies it, the changes will be committed to this and supporting documents.

Values

GROWTH

An underlying purpose of BC Ultimate to advance the sport of ultimate. We see value in growing capacity for more ultimate played in more places, by more people, in more forms.

  • We foster growth in popular awareness, participation, and competition.
  • We offer opportunities, and we support the development of new opportunities and directions.
  • We encourage personal growth and development.
  • We look to the future, and we support the development of youth.

SPIRIT

Spirit of the Game embodies an ideal of respect and understanding among athletes. It is a commitment to honour the rules, to act in good faith, and to mutually value the nature of competition.

  • We value sportsmanship, fair play, good faith and integrity in all aspects of our organization, inside and outside of competition.
  • We encourage and recognize respect and integrity in our athletes.
  • We respect our members, and strive to understand, to represent , and to respond to their interests.
  • We conduct our business in good faith and fairness, both internally and externally.

COMPETITION

As a game played between teams, competition is fundamental to the nature of the ultimate. We support and celebrate healthy competition.

  • We recognize the intrinsic worth of competition as a character-building and community-building activity.
  • We provide and promote opportunities of satisfying, elevating, and appropriate competition for participants.
  • We assist and encourage groups and athletes in the pursuit of excellence in competition.
  • We support lifelong athlete development.

COMMUNITY

BC Ultimate recognizes its role in an ecosystem of related communities, and strives to be a faithful citizen thereof.

  • We value and support the strength of our member communities, clubs, and organizations, of all sizes and states.
  • We value and support other provincial and national ultimate organizations.
  • We respect and engage our members and customers, for whom we exist.
  • We communicate with our members and conduct our business in an open, transparent fashion.