4 Tips for Athletic Directors to Stay Organized

Athletic Directors have an extensive list of responsibilities like game and practice scheduling; facility management; communicating with coaches, school admin, community stake holders; and of course, managing budgets. And the key to effectively managing all of these responsibilities? Organization. 

How organized you are as an AD could be making, or breaking, the success of your athletic department. As you head into budget resets and back-to-school preparations, here are 4 organization tips you can implement to help save time and ultimately be a better Athletic Director.

1. Clear Communication and Policies

As an AD, it’s important to have clear communication expectations and event policies so activities can run smoothly and all of the rules are followed. 

First, establish clear policies and procedures for all of the sports your school has. Being detailed in this process will help avoid any confusion down the road. From there, you can share these policies with your coaching staff and school administration. Having documents outside your office organized by sport could also help everyone easily access these documents, especially if there are multiple events running. 

Regularly communicating these policies will keep them top of mind for everyone. Plus, having an open communication channel increases trust and involvement for everyone involved.

If you’re looking to get even more organized, you could also utilize a Parent Portal that holds these policies, procedures, and rules for each sport. When parents go to register their child, it could be a required step to acknowledge all information.

2. Physical Organization

The advances in technology and the tools at our disposal help us do our jobs better, that is if they are used correctly. With that being said, don’t sleep on physical organization like folders, bins, and checklists. If you weren’t in your office and someone needed something, what direction would you point them in? Probably not giving your computer password…

So consider creating folders or binders for each sport that includes:

• Coach contact information
• Event procedures
• Rules and regulations
• Pre-Season, Post-Season, and In-Season checklists
• Schedules 
• Fundraising events and ideas
• Facility checklists

3. Digital Organization

If you thrive in a digital environment, lean into that! Create shared folders of everything that can be found outside or in your office relating to each sport. This also works well for budget management, especially with all of the invoice/receipt touchpoints.

Having a shared calendar is another way to stay organized. Keep your meetings up-to-date and even color coordinate practices and games so everyone can see who is using the gym or other facilities. 

You can also use things like Trello or Google Tasks to help you stay organized with workload and deadlines. It also helps you see what all there is to do and better manage your time.

4. Time Management

Managing your time is a very important aspect of organization. This could be how you schedule your day-to-day, run meetings, and delegate tasks.

Block off time on your calendar for tasks that need to be done, that way they actually get done and no meetings are booked over that time. 

For meetings, have a consistent cadence of your 1on1 meetings with coaches and other staff and then any necessary check points with larger groups. Scheduling these in advance will make sure you don’t miss any meetings and save time when it comes to scheduling last minute or urgent meetings.

Even though you’re the Athletic Director, you don’t have to do everything alone. Delegate tasks to your administrative staff or appropriate coaches! Not only will this free up time for higher-priority tasks, it will create trust and alignment in your department.

If time management is something you want to get better at, check out these 7 time management tools and techniques.

These tips are all things you can put into practice not just before the big budget reset in July but for your day-to-day responsibilities moving forward.