Badminton Europe will be discussing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with all Member Associations in the near future.

Badminton Europe (BEC) is reaching out to all Member Associations (MAs) to discuss an individualized Memorandum of Understanding, which Badminton Europe hope to see most of the federations agree and commit to.

- It is important for Badminton Europe to have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Member Associations as it better defines the focus areas of development, General Secretary of Badminton Europe, Brian Agerbak said.

- We are working on our strategic plan and we, Badminton Europe, are mostly facilitators. When we put numbers in our strategic plan, the numbers are partly based on what the Member Associations are delivering. By entering into discussions with our MAs on their strategic deliverables we can better estimate our strategic key performance indicators.

First time

It is the first time that Badminton Europe is reaching out to the Member Associations to formalize strategic cooperation and in the opinion of Brian Agerbak this will be of mutual benefit.

- Preparing these agreements with the Member Associations, will align our efforts to develop specific areas and allow us to be targeted in our support in the areas we agree on, Agerbak mentioned.

Badminton Europe will not demand that the members should sign the agreement, but the General Secretary has big hopes.

- We would like to have an understanding with most, if not all, of our members. It is not something that every federation must sign up to and it will not change anything in our relationship with the federation if they do not sign. It simply helps our development efforts to have a clear understanding of the strategic goals of the federations, Agerbak said.

Targeted development
Every year Badminton Europe and the Member Association conducts a member survey to take the pulse on the current status of European badminton.

- With the MoUs we are taking the results of the survey and creating a working document to focus the development efforts. The MoUs have different time spans depending on the development level of the federations. For the less developed federations we have a shorter time span before we will re-visit the MoU to set new targets when the first KPIs hopefully have been met.

- Like this the MoUs will be living documents that will continue to be the backbone of the cooperation with our members.  I am confident that this targeted approach will help our efforts to develop badminton in Europe, Agerbak said.