Dear member of Pan Idræt 

I want to wish you a very happy new year on behalf of the board of Pan Idræt. We hope that you have been happy to be part of the club and that, like us, you are looking forward to 2023 filled with lots of activities in Pan Idræt. 

2022 has offered us many good experiences. Almost 100 members from 10 sports took part in EuroGames 2022 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Copenhagen Black Swans, our wonderful field hockey team, celebrated its 10th birthday and across all sports we gathered in November for this year’s big Christmas party.

It was a blast of a party, even if the food wasn’t a huge success this year. It was a real shame with the catering – that will be fixed for next year. However, most people had enough food to ensure that the dance floor was still red hot when I slipped away around 01.30. All in all, I think people enjoyed themselves across our many teams and sports.

At the Christmas lunch, I was able to announce that for the first time ever we have reached 1600 members in one year. Which means we’re a community that’s growing. More and more people are interested in our club and the community we offer, where diversity and sport go hand in hand. And where we do everything, we can to minimize the amount of administrative tasks for all our volunteers.

Growth in membership also means growth in the need for social responsibility. As Denmark’s largest rainbow-coloured member organisation, we in Pan Idræt have a special responsibility to contribute to greater diversity in sports in general.

So in 2022, we have also been busy with the #Gamechanger project. It is about making sure that there is room for everyone in sport. In 2022, 51 clubs have become so-called #Gamechanger clubs, and are at the forefront of creating inclusion and equality for rainbow people in sports. A total of 52,328 members are part of a club which has joined the project this year and which works actively to create more inclusive spaces in sport. In all modesty, we are quite satisfied with that result for the first year. The project has received a grant from the Danish government’s LGBTI Action Plan 2023-2025 and will therefore continue for the next three years. 

This summer, we took part once again in Copenhagen Pride, and even though we were quite a way to the back in the march, I think that we showed everyone that you can easily do sports and at the same time have a different sexuality or gender identity than the majority. We also hosted a dedicated sports day at the City Hall Square/Pride Square, which completely drowned in the rain, but we’ll try again in 2023 – and this time even bigger with space for more sports! 

Our growth in members and sports also heighten the demands on the way we run Pan Idræt. We are now closing off the year 2022 and for the first time in more than ten years, we have had a permanent employee for an entire year. There are many administrative tasks which naturally follow from having 1600 members, 26 steering groups, an event group, venue bookings in 2 municipalities and more than 4000 e-mails in a year from volunteers and members. It is a huge job that we on the board see no other way to ensure the quality of than by having an employee centrally placed in the club. 

We therefore also hope that members as well as volunteers will send a friendly New Year’s greeting to our Lene, who forms our secretariat and makes sure that everything runs significantly more smoothly than it has done for many years. 

In addition to establishing the Secretariat, 2022 has also offered considerations about the internal framework of our organisation. The bylaws need an overhaul, and that work has slowly started here at the end of the year with input from volunteers. 

In addition to the bylaws, in 2023 we also need to take a closer look at coordinating our IT systems. Today, we use many different IT–platforms across the club’s many activities and sports – and we are a long way from having everything running equally smoothly. At the same time, there is a demand for greater flexibility with membership models, including having fee models that take greater social responsibility into account.

All in all, 2023 will be quite an exciting year and I am looking forward to us jumping into the new year together with the prospect of a lot of good experiences in Pan Idræt.

On behalf of the board, I wish you and your loved ones a

Happy New Year!

Christian Bigom

2022