"Informed Comment"

Transparency suffers, while conflict of interest thrives in local soccer

Transparency

Transparency is a word you must apply reasonably to soccer organizations, a crucial task for effective soccer boards, involves "being transparent, including communicating to members, stakeholders and the public and making information available upon request."

Transparency means that, as a steward of public trust, your board must ensure that its communications are open, honest, understandable and accessible. Communication must be a two-way process for non-profit boards - your board needs to ensure that the organization is both speaking and listening.

"Secrecy means deliberately hiding your actions; transparency means deliberately revealing them". Some Soccer officials think the minute they are elected, it gives them the right to go secret. Secret meetings are held with no reports forthcoming, because they do not consider the membership out there as stakeholders in their soccer machinery.

In some associations members (make that numbers) are welcome to attend their General Meetings, Banquets, Games and Tournaments, but have no right to know how these elected officials use the name of soccer to feed their own ego and satisfy there personal agendas/vendettas.

Bulldust I say! These officials have a DUTY to be transparent.

'Transparency' is at a cancerous level.

Transparency has its advantages — and challenges. Association transparency helps create trust among members, encourages more informed decision making, and supports greater participation. However, it does not guarantee that the right decisions will be made or that information will not be manipulated or misconstrued.

Conflict of Interest

The thing is that ALL administrators know about conflict of interest, but some simply ignore it.

Conflict of interest is primarily a problem for honest people. The dishonest just cheat, lie, sell their judgment, or otherwise knowingly betray the trust put in them. While the point of associations rules against conflict of interest is to prevent harm (that is, biased or corrupt decisions about public policy), the means is not prohibition of that harm. Instead, the conflict rules try to keep soccer officials out of any situation where even they, cannot know whether their judgment in some matters affecting one of those who has done them a favor is what it would have been had there been no favor.

Crush Conflict of Interest (exercise)

To ensure effective stewardship, one of your soccer board's main tasks is to understand its role to safeguard public trust and to avoid conflicts of interest. But are you up to the task? Would you spot a conflict of interest if you saw one?

Have a look at the following list of situations that could occur in a soccer organization,

  • A board member volunteers to provide labour related services for a National Sports Event and subsequently receives payment for this very same volunteer work.
  • A board member who is also a service user of the association (with another association) is placed at the top of the waiting list for services and receives preferential treatment ahead of others who applied for the same services much earlier .
  • A board member who serves on a another board in the community openly votes to change the rules and regulations to suit the requirements of this other community program or even his own team.
  • A board member serves as a discipline chair at a hearing where a family member is the coach of the accused player.
  • A board member provides the membership with false information to suit his personal agenda that may effect the process of a fair hearing and/or the results of democratic elections.

There are soccer administrators  committing "Conflict of Interest" every day? they know their doing it and will continue until their stopped or removed. These individuals will do whatever it takes to protect their own little empire and attack those that get in their way. They simply persecute those who stand against them by making constant negative remarks, repeated criticism or sarcasm, intimidation, threats, insinuations, trying to humiliate, circulating false information and to socially isolate members from the soccer community.

Would you manage to crush conflict of interest in your organization? If individuals are allowed to constantly breach the "Conflict of Interest" rules and are allowed to remain in soccer the game will decline, it will start to turn off adults and kids alike, because some soccer members are ruining it. Winning the political game has become so important to these officials that the fundamentals and ethics have been thrown out the window.

Make Transparency a mandate, and help reduce conflict of interest