Basketball Wales: WSA Finance Plus “like having new member of staff”
Finance Plus, one of three Membership Plus packages offered by the Welsh Sports Association (WSA) on top of standard membership benefits, was launched in April 2022 and has now been utilised by nine Welsh NGBs.
The bolt-on package provides confidential, professional hands-on bookkeeping service and support, designed for small to medium-sized member organisations looking for support with financial compliance.
Within the offer will include annual reviews of finance compliance against the Sport Wales capability framework and the preparation of monthly management accounts, inclusive of a financial summary report for board meetings.
Basketball Wales is one member to have taken up the offer, starting in April 2023.
“We are in our first financial year utilising this WSA service,” confirmed Interim CEO of Basketball Wales, Gavin Williams.
“So far, it has had a tremendous benefit for us as a very small NGB with limited staff and has helped to free up admin time which allow us to focus more on other areas.
“The biggest benefit for us to date is the production of our management accounts which are sent to us ahead of our board and finance committee meetings. These are then sent to all our directors and to our Sport Wales relationship manager.”
As with the other Membership Plus packages, Content & Comms Plus and Advocacy Plus, Finance Plus is essentially designed to maximise organisational capacity and support the efficient smooth running of our members.
“It’s helped to free up capacity within our organisation,” Gavin explained. “We have not fully integrated and handed over all our finance tasks but as we do more and more this will continue to be a huge benefit to Basketball Wales.”
Finance Plus is headed by the WSA’s Finance Officer Ehtasham Janjua.
“Ehtasham has been a great asset to us. He is very helpful and always responds quickly to emails with questions or queries we have. It’s like having a new member of staff for us! I can’t praise him enough!
“I would definitely recommend Finance Plus to other NGBs, particularly those on the small to medium funding scale,” concluded Gavin.
“Having someone like the WSA and Ehtasham on hand whenever we need them helps take away a huge amount of the financial burden from us so we can keep focusing on our key priorities such as our members and growing the game of Basketball in Wales.”
Head to our dedicated Membership Plus page to discover more about Finance Plus as well as Advocacy Plus and Content & Comms Plus, or contact the team now!
