What can the WSA offer you?
The Welsh Sports Association (WSA) strives to represent, lobby for, and support the sport and leisure sector in Wales. To do so, we provide a broad offer containing valuable resources and services – ranging from advocacy to business continuity – to our membership base.
If you’re a UK organisation that runs sporting events, fitness sessions, leisure classes or club matches in Wales, the WSA would be happy to support you with the whole host of resources we offer.
What does the WSA do?
As representatives for the sport and leisure sector, the WSA collaborate with organisations throughout the UK and Wales – including key strategic partners like Sport Wales, Welsh Government, the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action and Community Leisure UK.
In order for our vision of a Vibrant, Active Nation – and for a society that’s fit for the future – to be realised, we feel that it’s crucial to provide the breadth of the sporting sector with a foundation upon which long-term success can be guaranteed. Therefore, the WSA ensures that its support services are designed and continuously improved with its members’ specific needs in mind, so we have a sport and leisure industry set up for a strong future here in Wales.
If you’re reading outside of Wales, however, there’s no need to worry!
As long as you’re an organisation or body with presence and activity in Wales, the WSA will happily welcome you to its ever-increasing list of members. We’re here to make sure you can operate effectively and efficiently in Wales and play your part in encouraging a more “Active, Vibrant Nation”.
What benefits are there to WSA membership?
Well, it’s a long list.
We offer an extensive service to members, with advocacy and policy as well as business support for those providing a healthier future to Wales at the heart of our mission.
From political monitoring to member partnerships, and from preferential rates on the services of industry experts to governance templates, the WSA provides a whole host of widely-utilised resources – such as its hugely competitive and popular DBS checking service for sport and leisure, which over 300 organisation across the UK now use for their safeguarding duties.
While long-standing services like the above – and others such as expert helplines, preferential rates on the services of industry specialists, and up-to-date templates of governance documentation – continue to support our members, we recognise that needs are continuously changing with a volatile landscape.
This is why, in the current financial situation we find ourselves in, the WSA has recently launched the Procurement Portal for sport and leisure! This vital tool, designed in conjunction with Community Leisure UK (CLUK) and powered by our partners 2buy2, grants all WSA and CLUK members access to a broad range of solutions that allow organisations to make economies of scale and ease the economic challenges brought on by the cost of living crisis.
Meanwhile, the launch of our Strategy for 2022-2025, Setting Sport up for Success, reinforced our commitment to developing our Welsh-language resources in order to ensure that the language is not a barrier in people having the opportunity to maintain healthy and active lifestyles, and to contribute to Welsh Government’s ambitious target of one million Welsh-speakers by 2050.
With this in mind, the WSA was thrilled to launch new, free-of-charge Welsh-language resources – in collaboration with the National Centre for Learning Welsh – in recent months. March 2023 will see the inaugural WSA Raising Confidence Residential Course with Dysgu Cymraeg and, although applications for this course are now closed, we will look to roll out the opportunity again in the not-so-distant future.
Elsewhere, our collaboration has seen the launch of the free-of-charge sport and leisure course, designed to get the sector up to scratch with the basics of the language. The course comes in two parts with around ten hours of learning!
WSA Membership Plus
And the core membership offer is not where our support concludes, however.
April 2022 saw the launch of Membership plus, an extension on standard member benefits designed to drive and improve our support services. Advocacy Plus and Finance Plus were the two original packages within the services and continue to maintain positive uptake among our membership base.
The WSA was extremely excited to then launch a third bolt-on package, Content & Comms Plus, in November! Once again aimed at maximising the organisational efficiency and capacity of our members with cost-effective solutions, this new service provides focussed support to our members in relation to their content, communications and event requirements.
The WSA will continue to strive to improve its offer to ensure the prosperity of its members and the wider sport and leisure sector!
Visit the Become a Member page to find out how you can join us!
To hear what other organisations have had to say about WSA membership, check out our Membership Testimonials.
