These types of visible, exciting events couldn’t happen without two other types of less exciting, yet incredibly important things taking place in the background. The first ‘background activity’ is great planning by those who manage various aspects of the sport, including the board, staff, volunteers, and partners of USA Ultimate. Thoughtful, long-term plans for how to spend time and money are essential for a growing sport like Ultimate. Organizations like the IOC and ESPN simply don’t partner with sports and organizations that don’t have this type of discipline and vision. Since 2008 USA Ultimate has been guided by Strategic Plans that have helped produce these types of exciting outcomes for our members. The most recent six-year USA Ultimate Strategic Plan was released in July of 2012, and you can read about it here .

It is an exciting time for Ultimate. Recognition of the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), youth membership in USAU hitting 10,000 for the first time, good visibility for the MLU and AUDL in their early years, the inaugural USA Ultimate Triple Crown Tour kicking off with the second annual U.S. Open earlier this summer in Raleigh, U.S. National Teams posting a perfect 36-0 record and bringing home four gold medals from the U23 World Championships and World Games, overall USA Ultimate membership at an all-time high, and USA Ultimate’s multi-year exclusive contract with ESPN, are just a few of the highlights and milestones from the first half of the year.

We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to four key aspects of the new bylaws (the bylaws themselves are a bit Byzantine for legal reasons, so we’ve lumped together assorted pieces to arrive at these four ‘areas’). Some of the things described in these four articles represent minor changes to the previous version of the bylaws, and some are completely new. (You can always find the full bylaws on our website here ).

It is important to note that USA Ultimate’s mission remains the same, while the bylaws have been updated to support achievement of our mission in the ‘next generation’ of our sport. Bylaws are certainly not the most exciting part of what we do at USA Ultimate, but they are incredibly important, and they do have significant bearing on our sport. The bylaws we are introducing with this article represent the first real update and modernization of the bylaws in 30+ years.

The second important ‘background activity,’ and the focus of this article, is mature governance and leadership . For USA Ultimate, we are proud to announce a new set of organizational bylaws that will support continued implementation of the Strategic Plan through 2018 and beyond, and produce more great news for the Ultimate community.

Finally, I wanted to extend a special thank you to Board member Mandy Eckhoff , who drove the massive effort to research and rewrite the bylaws. This project would not have been completed in such fine form without her!

I hope that these articles highlight for you the good work that USA Ultimate’s leadership is engaged in. I also hope that they help you understand that the organization is in good hands from a governance perspective, reflected in part by our new bylaws.

As we describe the new bylaws, we have also taken the opportunity to highlight key efforts at USA Ultimate that are ongoing in these four areas: