The challenge
Sport England and the government required an independent and robust assessment on the impact of their £100m investment in grass root club facilities. They also wished to capture insights and intelligence about how to improve the funding process and the impact of future investment programmes.
What did we do?
The key stakeholder group was the National Governing Bodies (NGB) of the individual sports. To ensure their ownership and active support, we ran an early workshop with the 19 crucial stakeholder NGBs at Wembley Stadium. We also liaised with them throughout the process and conducted individual interviews with key NGB managers. We adopted a clear communications strategy, pre-notifying the clubs with a letter from Sport England, and used a combination of email and telephone contacts to identify the appropriate personnel at club level. These personnel were supported with guidance on how to respond and a helpline manned by expert staff members. We recognised from the outset the importance of early engagement with grass roots personnel, often volunteers, who were supportive in principle but had limited time, and adapted our evaluation exercise accordingly. The standard responses were enriched by in depth studies of 20 clubs, involving face to face discussions and the provision of cameras to enable clubs to produce their own video material.
What was the breakthrough for Sport England?
Sport England were more than happy with the insights from the evaluation exercise, which clearly showed the impact of the funding as well as highlighting learning for future programmes. A range of reports were produced based on the responses received, including case studies of individual clubs and a summary report for each individual sport, improving further Sport England’s research intelligence on the impact of their investments. Quadrant is retained by Sport England to work on two further contracts with additional client teams, including evaluation of access to sport for ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
