Yardstick

About Yardstick

Yardstick is a global parks and recreation best practice programme, developed by and for the industry. While the first editions of Yardstick were on paper, it now operates through a bespoke online tool, face-to-face visit from one of our Yardstick auditors, and a Yardstick survey team.   

Yardstick provides two key services: annual benchmarking and intercept user surveys.

Benchmarking

An annual benchmarking programme for government agencies looking to compare to other similar sized organisations and check their progress against best practice indicators.

Current available benchmark programmes:

• Parks and parks services (sportsfields and play assets included)

Benchmarks programmes available in 2025:

• Recreation facilities (re-imagined)
• Trails
• Cemeteries

Park user surveys

Yardstick has a bespoke online survey tool and question sets specifically designed for undertaking park user surveys to determine user satisfaction and feedback by site. The results are able to be compared against your own multiple sites as well as other participating organisations, and compared by park category (neighborhoods, sports). 

The park user surveys are set up to ‘plug and play’. We take out the set-up of surveys by providing our already developed standard set of survey questions for these on-site surveys that we know work from years of delivery. You can also add your own custom questions. These surveys can be delivered by your team using our software on tablets and iPads, or we can deliver the entire survey for you with our survey team.

Why Yardstick?

Keep up with best practice

Easily keep up with best practice through our external audit process each year and best practice indicators in the programme. Receive annual ‘State of Nation’ industry reports on the current years Yardstick data. 

Demonstrate your value

Need information for that impact report? We have you covered. Find easy access to the numbers and charts you need for presentations, reports and proposals. 

Justify change and funding needs

Get the numbers you need to prioritise funding in the right areas and justify your decision making to managers and elected members. Demonstrate with data the need for more resource, or re-allocation of finances into an area of dire need.

Pivot tables not needed

Save time on your spreadsheet analysis with downloadable charts, tables and data right at your fingertips. 

Find the gaps

Need to know what is working and not working with your plans and budgets? Want to know how your operational spend compares to similar-sized organisations?  We've got your back with timely insights that make planning a breeze.

Parks user surveys made easy

We’ve done the work, so you don’t have to. We have the questions and software set up so that you can ‘plug and play’ to find out meaningful park user satisfaction data quickly.

Join a global community of parks people creating better data

There is only one way to get better data across our industry – sharing. Join our community of cities, districts, and municipalities who know that the way forward is together. Make connections and learn lessons from both Yardstick staff and organisations like you from around the globe. 

More information

Find out more about the process, pricing, and our free starter package on our website: www.yardstick.global.

You can sign up to our communications list to keep up with when the new benchmark areas will be launched and feature updates at the bottom of any of our website pages.

Note: Charts below are examples only of reporting available as a Yardstick member, and do not represent real organisational data.