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“Member-driven” is a phrase you hear a lot with organizations. It implies access, fairness, and influence. But for many riders, trainers, and owners, the phrase can feel disconnected from daily experience, especially when rule changes, calendar decisions, or eligibility requirements seem to arrive fully formed.
So what does a member-driven sport actually require?
For USHJA President, Britt McCormick, the answer is about participation—specifically, when and how members choose to engage.
“I would say the USHJA is probably in as good a place, if not a better place than it’s been since its founding,” McCormick says. That confidence isn’t rooted in the absence of disagreement. It’s rooted in something else entirely: people showing up.
Being Heard Isn’t the Same as Getting Your Way
One of McCormick’s most telling observations comes from the USHJA Annual Meeting, where he noticed a shift in tone. “People are now happy having a voice again,” he says. “They’re eager to be heard.”
That distinction matters. McCormick isn’t promising universal agreement or even satisfaction. Instead, he emphasizes something more foundational: access to the conversation itself.
“They want to have a chance to put their opinion forward and have an instant response,” he explains, “even if the response is, ‘We’ll work on that and get back to you.’”
In other words, being heard doesn’t mean leadership will immediately act on every concern. It means members are part of the process early enough to shape how issues are framed and addressed. A member-driven sport isn’t conflict-free; it’s one where disagreement has a place to land.
Governance Is Slow by Design
One of the most common frustrations in horse sport is the feeling that decisions appear suddenly. McCormick pushes back on the idea that these outcomes are abrupt.
“These things are talked about a year ahead of time and sometimes a year and a half ahead of time,” he says. “They don’t just happen overnight.”
That long runway is intentional. “When you pull on one string, you affect ten different things,” he explains. Change in a national organization is rarely isolated; it ripples across trainers, show managers, officials, owners, and riders in ways that aren’t always obvious at first glance.
This is why governance can feel slow, and why meaningful influence requires early engagement. Once a rule reaches the implementation stage, the opportunity to shape it has usually passed.
Why Showing Up Still Matters
McCormick is unapologetic about the value of in-person participation, even as many organizations move toward remote access. “I want to see people face to face because that’s where we get the most feedback and the best interaction,” he says.
He’s also candid about what gets lost when engagement becomes purely virtual. “Ninety percent of the discussion happens in the room,” he explains. “The other ten percent happens in the hallway.”
Those hallway conversations between sessions, after meetings, or informal exchanges are where nuance lives. They’re where ideas get refined, concerns get contextualized, and relationships are built. “That’s where a lot of business is done and a lot of good ideas are exchanged,” McCormick says.
For him, a member-driven sport isn’t one that simply collects opinions. It’s one that fosters sustained, relational dialogue among people who may otherwise never cross paths.
When You’re Not There, Decisions Still Get Made
The most uncomfortable implication of a member-driven model is that silence doesn’t pause the system. Governance continues whether members participate or not.
McCormick offers a concrete example. A recent change to equitation schooling rules, driven by how equitation classes intersect with jumper schooling regulations, caught some riders and trainers off guard. “People called me and said, ‘How could you let this go through? We didn’t know anything about it,’” he recalls.
His response was direct. “If they’d have been at annual meeting last year,” he says, “they could have chimed in on it. And they were not there.”
The rule hadn’t appeared suddenly. It had been discussed “at length” the year before. But without participation at that stage, members lost the chance to influence the outcome.
“What happens at these meetings has a direct impact on what happens in the field of play,” McCormick says. A member-driven sport depends on members being present before decisions are finalized, not just reacting afterward.
Listening Has to Be Structured
McCormick is clear that engagement can’t rely on annual meetings alone. He describes an ongoing effort to meet members where they are through town halls and outreach. “We’ve been doing a listening tour,” he says. “Taking notes and meeting as many members as we can and getting to as many facilities as we can.”
At the most recent annual meeting, he points to broad participation across segments of the sport. “We talked about everything from horse welfare, human welfare,” he says, as well as eligibility rules, calendar pressures, and how USHJA can better support show managers.
One detail stands out to him: “A lot of managers there had never been to an annual meeting before.” To McCormick, that signals progress, not because consensus was reached, but because new voices entered the room.
“That tells me we’re on the right path,” he says.
A Member-Driven Sport Is a Shared Responsibility
For McCormick, leadership is about facilitation. It’s creating systems that allow feedback to surface, then balancing competing needs across a diverse membership.
“This is not just a simple thing where you say, ‘Let’s go do this,’” he explains. “You really have to look at how everything connects.”
A member-driven organization, in his view, doesn’t absolve leadership of responsibility. But it also doesn’t position members as passive consumers. Influence flows in both directions and only works when both sides stay engaged.
The challenge, then, is not whether the sport claims to be member-driven. It’s whether members are willing to participate early, often, and imperfectly enough to help shape what comes next.
A member-driven sport isn’t defined by unanimous agreement. It’s defined by who shows up and when.
Want more insight from Britt McCormick? Listen to this episode of The Plaidcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform for conversations with the most influential voices in the equestrian world.
