Hi there,

We’re incredibly proud to confirm that BMABA is now officially a Community Interest Company (CIC) — a powerful new chapter in our journey to support, protect, and uplift the martial arts community across the UK.

This move cements something we’ve always believed in: BMABA doesn’t exist to generate profit — it exists to make a difference.

Every resource, every programme, every advancement we’ve made is now legally protected and permanently aligned to benefit clubs, instructors, and students.

In 2024, BMABA Limited was valued by investors at £1.65 million. We made the conscious decision to turn down commercial investment — not because the value wasn’t real, but because our values mattered more.

Now, that value — and everything we’ve built together — belongs entirely to the community, within the community, for the benefit of the community.

This shift to a CIC means:

• Every surplus is reinvested back into member support and development.
• Our future will never be dictated by commercial shareholders or private owners.
• Our mission — to raise standards, improve access, and safeguard the future of martial arts — will always come first.

Our Founder, Giovanni Soffietto, said:
“This move secures our legacy. We’re building something that puts ethics before earnings — and ensures every member knows their association is here for them, not for profit. It’s in our DNA, and it’s in our logo: ‘To high places by narrow roads.’”

We want to thank every single member who has helped make this possible.

You are the reason we exist — and together, we’re just getting started.

For the community. For the future. For martial arts.

Hi there,

BMABA have always been clear from day 1 that we're keen to work with and support like-minded organisations. As an independent body focused on trying to bring about systemic improvements to the way martial arts is regulated, the standards to which clubs operate, and the safety under which students can access training, working as broadly as possible and having as many clubs as we can adopt our standards is hugely important.

As early as 2021 we've been working in a limited capacity with the likes of Sport England SCiMA (Safeguarding Code) and from there, a number of other NGBs and Pre-NGBs have, over the past twelve months in particular, come through to us looking to work in partnership.

As of March 2025, we have 9 NGBs, Pre-NGBs (those applying for NGB recognition) and NGO organisations using BMABA as an essential part of their licencing, safeguarding and membership provision.

This is huge. It helps BMABA influence the broader martial arts landscape in a profound and style agnostic way. It also helps our independent clubs benefit from an ever-better-recognised and respected brandname.

When an NGB or NGO comes to BMABA for a partnership, they're typically going to be offering a BMABA membership to their own members, as part of their membership provision. In almost all cases, that means the NGB or NGO is effectively outsourcing things like qualifications, training, safeguarding oversight and compliance to BMABA, so they can focus more on the 'on the mats' aspect of what they do (competitions, seminars, gradings and so on).

We think this is a great mutual benefit. BMABA grow bigger, benefit from increased revenue, influence a broader aspect of the martial arts industry and can then re-invest that growth into more qualifications, technology and resources. NGBs can also ensure their instructors are properly vetted and trained, and have access to the latest legislation and guidelines.

The net result is an industry working closer together on the stuff that matters - safeguarding, compliance, training, CPD, and so on - without diluting any aspect of unique or individual organisation identity.

If you're an independent BMABA instructor or club, these partnerships in no way impact or degrade the service or membership you have with us directly. If anything, it just rapidly helps us scale up the release of new courses, technology and tools.

It's a win, win, win for BMABA, NGBs/NGOs, and independent clubs. Best of all, it allows us to show a unified approach to best practice across our now 110,000+ growing membership base to the likes of Sport England and DCMS.

Hi there,

13 years ago when I first setup BMABA, it was done with the promise that we would remain politics free and transparent, no matter how big we got.

Today we sit with more than 100,000 members, significant revenue and numerous accolades to our name, all of which I am extremely grateful for.

The time has come for me to deliver on the promise made back in 2012 in a way which safeguards this for the next 13+ years of exciting growth that lie ahead.

It's for this reason, today we passed a resolution to convert BMABA to a CIC (Community Interest Company). Until now, whilst run as a not for profit (and being registered as a social enterprise) there would have been nothing to prevent myself or anybody else at board level reneging on this promise. With the conversion to CIC now signed, sealed and in the post to our solicitors for action with the Community Interest Regulator immediately thereafter, I'm pleased to confirm that promise is now legally binding into the future.

Our (soon to be) new CIC status doesn't change the day to day operations. I'll be remaining as CEO with my same brilliant team around me, but we'll benefit from the legal transparency that what we do is for the public interest - that being the interest and good of you, our loyal members.

We also hope to use this legal standing to win funding grants which we can inturn redirect to our clubs.

Nothing changes for you as a member; you don't need to take any action and nothing will be lost in terms of what we do, the team or anything else.

We just wanted to share this positive step forward with the community, so you're not surprised to see BMABA CIC pop up over the next few weeks.

Thank you!

Hi there,

We're really excited to announce an overhaul to our template document section. It's always been a heavy-traffic tool for our members, and the new Policy Creator enables you to select from more than 50+ policies, spanning everything from safeguarding policies and GDPR statements through to head injury management forms and contracts of employment.

Simply input a few key details, and the system will take care of producing in-depth, compliant policies. You can then edit in real-time to make sure it's fully customised and ready for your club.

Once you're done, you can save for later, or copy to clipboard (if you plan to take it to your own website, for example) or print directly from the same screen.

We hope this policy creator will make it even easier to have a comprehensive set of policies at club level, with the backing of BMABA's initial framework to ensure it is compliant and up to scratch.

You can find the policy creator here, as well as on the main menu in MyBMABA.

Hi there,

We're absolutely thrilled to confirm that BMABA are not an Approved Provider (#786494) with the CPD Group. We've now started the process of aligning and submitting all of our awards and qualifications to CPD Group for formal recognition and CPD approval.

Whilst the process may take several weeks, this is a huge step forwards in terms of ensuring BMABA's awards are widely recognised, and carry weight in the broader community.

Look out for the CPD Approved Logo on certification and courses in the near future, as we work to make our qualifications more accessible, professional and recognised.

Hi there,

Since 2022, BMABA have had a unique and industry leading Club Colours Licence. This licence has been regarded as the elite of the elite - the toughest and most thorough vetting process anywhere in UK martial arts.

As part of the high standards enforced by our Club Colours provision, this has afforded us to extend any BMABA club in receipt of 'the Colours' automatic recognition and certification through Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts (SCiMA) - the Sport England championed programme for safeguarding children in martial arts.

We realise the prior licencing and review process was far too manual, and far too slow. It was too difficult for clubs to see who and what was currently verified, and what was not. It was also almost impossible for our office team to provide a timely update or response, as it involved sifting through huge amounts of data as well as alot of manual entry.

Our all-new BETA Club Colours Dashboard is now accessible 'right out of the can' in MyBMABA. It provides realtime updates, a fully automatic and instantaneous refresh or issuance of the award, and visually stunning checks and balances.

Its our hope the Club Colours will become a much more widely adopted standard, with our BMABA School of Excellence badge awarded to those who hold the licence being fully respected for the huge privilege it is.

If you'd like to learn more about whats involved, and to get started, please head to the Club Colours Dashboard in MyBMABA.

Hi there,

The BETA launch of our new built-in portal has been hugely successful, and we hope you're enjoying the additional functionality that is now available without any secondary logins.

As 2024 wraps up, we're going to be spending some time when the site is a little less busy doing a full review of content, design and functionality.

We recognise MyBMABA can be a bit overwhelming for some instructors, so with the new technology now available to us we'll be stripping back menus, removing unnecessary duplications, making everything more user friendly and ensuring all content is working and up to date.

If you spot any errors or bugs along the way, please do let us know 👍

After launching our own Club Management Platform in 2023, we've been overwhelmed with the positive response from our community.

Unfortunately for some, that software runs on Wordpress, and that meant for various reasons it wasn't the right fit. It also provided a full solution - with parent and student accounts, payment and so on. For a decent number of clubs, it was just too much functionality.

We've now locked into a 10 week development window the release of a brand new tool for MyBMABA, which will effectively produce ClubManager by BMABA 'Lite' (name still in progress!).

This will take all the best parts of our Management Platform, and make them available for clubs without any need to tie in payments or parental/student interaction.

Grade tracking, attendance, detailed student records and management, finance modules, tasks, safeguarding reports and so much more - it's going to be fully available to clubs via MyBMABA, doesn't require any setup and can be used manually from your end, without needing parents or students to sign up and take any action from their side.

We're hoping this will hugely improve club management and admin for many of our members. Remember, if you use open allocation student licences, you can leave the allocation blank in favour of the new system.

We'll share updates and screenshots as the development makes progress, but we hope to have it launched before mid-April, so please keep an eye on our news centre here for more updates.

We've just launched new Digital Risk Assessments for all members. This is yet another 'first of its kind' tool that will allow clubs to easily produce, update and print-out (or save digitally) up to date risk assessments for their clubs and venues.

We've pre-populated the system to generate a template risk assessment with over 22 typical example risks, with all other fields populated. All you'll need to do is delete irrelevant risks, add in anything specific, update the comments (actions) and check the severity.

We're hoping this tool will help clubs become more compliant with Health & Safety (and insurance) requirements, without a huge administrative burden.

Take a look and try it for yourself. It's under the Dashboard, and can be reached directly here.

Hi there,

After an intense build period, our very own in-house designed and executed MyBMABA portal has officially replaced the prior Zoho Portal in BETA.

This is a huge deal. It signifies a huge leap forward in our technical abilities to give our members hands-on access to the latest technology, and better control over automation.

The new portal has been completely built from the ground up to focus on making it rapid-fast for clubs to take control of registrations and renewals, as well as the generation of certification and documents.

Instructors, assistants, volunteers, open students, named students, temporary students, club records, account verification and our LSGR have been re-imagined. Clubs can now access the portal without any further logins, and also via the MyBMABA App. Any renewals or registrations are instant, and documentation can be generated any point on demand too.

No more waiting days for us to manually adjust records or generate documents, and no more issues accessing records by phones, or on smaller screens.

We hope the initial release is welcome by clubs, and we look forward to your feedback. This is still in BETA, which means we expect to find a few wrinkles and creases, and we invite that feedback from everyone in the community.

We have a tonne of exciting new functionality we can now unleash too, so keep your eyes on MyBMABA as we head into December!