Parents Canadian Gymnastics NPO Board Members

[GymParent0]

Hello,

I'm wondering what others thoughts are on the NPO Gymnastics Organizations and their Boards. I've noticed first hand that the Boards are often filled with parents that have zero athletic experience and often are involved to pad their resumes and seek power and control over the other parents, and the financials. In my recent experience, a board punitively removed one parent while ignoring the same behaviour of other parents, including themselves. These Board members do not follow the NPO protocols and openly operate as if the Gymnastics Club is a private entity.

The Board Members or the Director then went ahead and contacted other clubs to threaten cross-training income if they took on one of their competitive athletes, and purposely excluded the athlete from their competitive team, rooted in their distain for a child's parent. If such behaviour is considered rational, a racist or politically biased board member could very easily use their racist ideology to exclude certain ethnicities, stringing along other Board Members afraid of becoming targeted in the future.

When the governing body of the Gymnastics Organization was informed of this malicious and abusive behaviour, the governing organization validated the Gymnastics Organizations "right" to use their organizations funding as leverage to spite a family, and harm one of their former competitive athletes. Numerous gyms disclosed via e-mail that they had essentially been blackmailed into not taking the athlete on, and the governing body refused to acknowledge the discrimination. The governing body went so far as to claim that it's like "a job reference" and clubs have the right to deny cross-training funding to clubs for whatever reason they so choose, including the enrolling of a family, irrespective of the reason why.

What appears incredibly alarming to me, is that Board Members and Directors who are appointed members (should service their members and athletes best interests in accordance to the governing ethics, rules laid out by the provincial governing body and NPO law) have the power thanks to just a handful of member votes by their friends in a given meeting, to then control millions of dollars and use the NPO as their own personal venture.

I also noticed that Board Members often hire family members for roles such as Photographer and Handyman at salaried rates, without exploring the open market for competent Photographers and Handymen. These people often have zero work experience and provide horribly low grade products. This is just another example of Board Members employing the family members of their staff, to ensure control and manipulate the organization into their own little piggy bank. Not to mention, renting out some of the gym space to friends and family within the club for their personal businesses, at who knows what rental advantage and kick-back/votes in the next Board election.

From what I've seen, many clubs have these issues, where parents without any athletic experience are appointed on these NPO Boards at their Gymnastics Clubs, and use the club resources for their own, self interests while completely ignoring their NPO laws, and governance that requires them to service the community and not themselves.

Now, I'm sure somewhere there is a Board or a Board Member that is unpaid and contributing to their club in excellent way and I don't want to discredit their great work but I am wondering if other parents have recognized this issue and I'm curious to hear your experiences?

This should be an open and safe space for parents to openly speak about this, but obviously many won't because their child's competitive contracts forbid you to speak about the club on any social media or forums.

So please, share your experiences only if you are anonymous or your kid is retired.

 

[GymParent0]

Also to piggy back off of the last sentence about contracts:

Clubs maintain control over the parents freedom to speak by making any

**issues, problems or disagreements with the gym**

A matter that the member must bring to a private meeting with the club, and can be reprimanded if found to have discredited the gym in any way, which includes a member having an issue with the conduct of the Board itself.

To me, this is incredibly wrong because when you book a meeting, they will essentially tell you to shut-up or face the consequences. As outlined above, if you happen to violate their rules, which essentially give them right ownership of your speech, they have full jurisdiction to subject you to their abuse, or face a penalty which may include informing every gym in the region that they provide revenue to. They can punitively dismiss the member in question and utilize their organizations assets to blackmail other gyms, and be fully backed/ignored/protected by the provincial governing organization.

Essentially, if there are abuses or gross negligence going on at clubs, the Clubs have the capacity to hide and prevent any accountability for their malice. This is why you'll often see sexual abuse and other major abuse cases show up years later while the victims pile up and those Board Members have no accountability for their oversight. Nobody will turn around and ask if they Board knew, which would make them a child abuser. Nobody will ask, why didn't anyone speak up if they knew?

Moreover, the parents cannot speak amongst each other about say, a coach being touchy, and only have those same Board Members/Staff to file the report with. In any case that the child and their parents take action and have proof, the provincial governing body does not condemn the guilty organization from utilizing their financial means to isolate the abused children from sport, as a consequence for reporting the abuser.

The dark rabbit hole this can go down and has gone down (dozens of articles with a quick google search) is literally protected by the club contracts, and lack of organizational oversight by the provincial governing body.

In other words, if you as a club are doing a good job, nobody would speak ill of you. This is why parents should be free to speak openly, so that abuse can be caught before decades of victims are made.

Please discuss!