A new floorball development project “Floorball: Fit for Future” (4F) involving eight IFF Member Associations has taken its first steps when a joint meeting was organised on the 19th of March. The 4F Project is coordinated by Czech Floorball and supported by the Erasmus+ EU Programme. The IFF is involved as the project supervisor.

The vision of the project is to improve the governance of national associations and establish a truly strategic management system which will allow the floorball community to grow, respond better to current and future challenges, become even more accessible, and ultimately provide the best conditions possible for all current and new players, referees, coaches, officials, volunteers, and fans.

The specific objective of the 4F project is to create a general strategic organisational development tool that will merge experiences, know-how and best practice of all participants as well as relevant external experts and will offer universal as well as practical solutions applicable to organisational development in floorball or other national sports governing bodies.

The project is based on co-operation between mentee National Associations from Denmark, Germany, Poland, Spain and Slovakia and mentor National Associations from the Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland and their mutual interaction, sharing of best practice and networking, so that mentees are supported to create strategic goals for their development and provided with tools for their implementation. At the same time, the project shall give mentors a chance to revise their own development strategy and processes taking into account newly acquired experience and broader context of development of floorball in Europe. The IFF is also taking part in the project supervising quality.

Floorball Germany’s Project Manager Frederik Garre comments the need for the project in German Floorball Association’s press release:

– Floorball Germany has reached a critical point in its development stage, and the most varied demands on the association can hardly be mastered due to the current structures and resources. Although Floorball Germany is striving towards top performance, there is a certain stagnation in the development. The EU project is an attempt to use a new strategic approach to give Floorball Germany the next drive to improve the development. 

4F Project defined outputs

The main outputs that the project aims to achieve are the following:

• A General Strategic Development Tool containing 4 following elements:
  • A comprehensive description of all operations within the association in form of a Summary in order to secure common understanding and priorities and Analytical Self-Assessment Questionnaire to help the associations asses the state of their development and a baseline for subsequent development strategies
• Maturity Matrix based on comparable criteria to compare individual organisations as well as identify their strengths and weaknesses (read: more and less developed areas)
• Handbook for Strategic Development complemented with guidance documents to offer a well-working tool covering universal processes as well as practical solutions for organisational development and Case studies of current best practices of NAs available within the strategic development and organisational operations.
• Methodology of a creation process of a Development Action Plan.

Parties involved in the 4F Project

• Czech Floorball – Project coordinator
• Floorball Denmark
• German Floorball Association
• Polish Floorball Federation
• Slovak Floorball Association
• Spanish Floorball Association
• Swedish Floorball Federation
• Swiss Floorball Association
• International Floorball Federation