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CONTENT FROM EMAIL NEWSLETTER DATED NOVEMBER 11th 2024
To put it briefly, the British Disc Golf Association needs to evolve in order to meet the needs of a higher calling. This means first off changing the title to the English Disc Golf Association. Secondly, it will mean changes to the current Constitution and much of the current policy.
You will no doubt be asking why are these changes required. The answer to this is in two parts which coincidentally happened at the same time.
As many of you may already know in 2022 the previous National Director and myself submitted a Pre Application for recognition of disc golf to Sport England in order to see at what level the BDGA was at and what needed to be done before we moved to the next stage. While certain issues were easy to resolve with improved governance the bigger issues we still need to address are ‘Geographical Remit / Alignment & Influence’. As disc golf has grown both here in the UK and globally so to have the organisational bodies that are responsible for it and it is these organisations that the Sports Councils would like to see more aligned and in doing so set their geographical remits.
As I mentioned previously the sport is growing, so well in fact that it is going to be featured at the World Games in China next year thanks to the hard work of the World Flying Disc Federation WFDF. This means that WFDF has to comply with all the rules of the International Olympic Committee. This is where things get a bit complicated. The first diagram is the current structure and what you may notice is that the current flow of disc golf between the BDGA, SDGA and WFDF is through UKU. This needs to cease and a new structure needs to be implemented. It therefore makes sense to use this broader change in structure as the perfect time to evolve the BDGA to the EDGA and help with our ongoing efforts with Sport England. You will see in the second diagram the proposed new structure if everything can be agreed upon (names and logos may change). This proposed new structure will take time to implement as (you can clearly see) there are many organisations to factor into all this but for us, the first step is to make the change from BDGA to EDGA. I appreciate that this is a complex situation and as ever my door is always open and I remain happy to chat.