Caring for community sports hubs

Victoria Boelman, Head of Research at The Young Foundation, blogs about the importance of community sports hubs and the challenges they face in connecting with their local communities.

Community sports hubs are at the heart of our sporting landscape. They provide opportunities on the doorsteps of millions of people, for sports and physical activity, and to learn and develop important life skills such as leadership and teamwork. They also bring people together, building a greater sense of community, encouraging volunteering, fundraising and social activities, and creating local jobs. All the evidence suggests that active people and active communities do better.

The Young Foundation recently launched a new report, "Keeping Up and Running: The Case for Investment in Community Sports Hubs". In it we set out the strengths of these key institutions, and demonstrate four key challenges where they are in urgent need of more help and support.

A community sports hub is a not for profit, community led institution which owns land or facilities used exclusively or primarily for sporting purposes. Examples range from 'The Factory Skatepark' in Dundee to Carn Brea Leisure Centre in Cornwall, to name but two.

As one of the researchers on the project, I personally spoke to over twenty leaders of hubs and it was striking to see the themes which kept appearing during those conversations. We found that community sports hubs often possessed creative, inspirational and motivated leaders, who put the benefit of their communities above all else and were able to mobilise committed volunteers. We also found that the hubs were grounded in their local environments, and responsive to local demand, possessing a remarkable ability to adapt, innovate and offer something unique.

At the same time, there were a series of common challenges which were faced by many of the hubs. They struggled with finding effective ways to engage 'hard to reach' groups, they needed support in key areas such as fundraising, marketing and business management, and they found measuring their impact difficult and time consuming. Were these pressures to be relieved, hubs would be freed to focus more time on delivering high quality sports and physical activity experiences and engaging new groups.

At The Young Foundation, our experience of helping third sector organisations and social enterprises in a range of areas helped feed into our three recommendations for ways in which funders and policy makers can act to support the sector. It is clear that hubs would benefit from access to a group venture support programme or 'accelerator' which would be able to provide intensive business skill training and also introductions to potential funders, investors and partners. A bespoke accelerator would also incorporate sessions on the delivery of physical activity sessions, for example which promote physical literacy and positive early experiences of sport.

Our second recommendation is that hubs consider harnessing relevant professional support under the guise of venture philanthropy. Typically this involves a blend of grant funding and pro bono professional support targeted at building organisational capacity.

Finally, we recommend that more hubs consider the option of community shares. Community Share Offers are a way for community organisations to raise capital to fund their work, offering withdrawable share capital to the local community to provide finance for an organization. They also promote a greater level of local engagement and participation in the organization through a vested and genuine interest.

We would welcome thoughts from those in the sector on the report, our findings and our recommendations. Please contact rachel.schon@youngfoundation.org or peter.gerry@youngfoundation.org

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