Sport
Why grassroots level sport is critical to leadership: a conversation with Sported
Tom Burstow, Deputy CEO of Sported, discusses the importance of grassroots level sport and how it helps shape future leaders.
Grassroots level sport is an incubator for responsible, driven and resilient leaders. It offers a pipeline of diverse leadership talent who are community focused, highly collaborative and experienced in handling adversity. Supporting this level of sport is key to unlocking diversity at the opposite end, among both leadership teams and boards.
Reaching these potential leaders and helping the communities most in need requires partnerships between charities and collaboration with local and central government, funders, and the private sector.
Simon Cummins, Global Head of Sports; Sports, Gaming and Media Practice spoke with Tom Burstow about Sported, the challenges facing grassroots level sport and what can be done to protect it.
Why is grassroots level sport so important?
Grassroots level sport helps young people fulfill their potential. Through sport and physical activity, we can help them overcome social and educational disadvantages, discrimination and disability.
The goal is to tackle social barriers that help young people to achieve better education, better employment and build better communities.
If you can get this right, you create a far more equitable entry point for sport. Globally, the challenge is access – where they are and the background they’re from can create significant barriers. For example, if you’re a wheelchair user or grow up in a rural area, your opportunities may be far more limited. But if you can level out this playing field, then you create better pathways, giving young people a sense of achievement and improve their mental health. It also develops a wider pool of athletic talent.
Cross-fertilization is an important part of this. We brought together an inner-city boxing club and a rowing club, so the club could donate some of their rowing machines to the boxing club. It meant the boxing club members, whose access to broader sports was limited, could engage in a sport like rowing. Such partnerships provide opportunities and consequently drive diversity in different sports.
What are the challenges to grassroots level sport?
We connect with 3,000 different organizations providing nearly 100 different sports. The reason Sported exists is because they run on shoestring budgets, under the radar of national or international governing bodies and are mostly managed by volunteers in areas of high economic disadvantage. These groups often don’t own the facilities they use, have little access to public funding and run the risk of breaking up if one or two key volunteers leave. We offer them free membership to Sported which connects them with a network of partner organizations as well as big brands that want to support community activities.
With the cost of living crisis, we’ve seen a 53% drop in the income levels of these organizations and a 40% drop in the number of young people attending these groups. This has resulted from a range of reasons – from parents not having the money to pay for fees or needing to work additional jobs and not being able to take kids to training, to young people taking on babysitting jobs for extra money. The loss of opportunity is significant, as is the impact on mental health.
What is Sported doing to tackle these challenges?
We act as a broker between these sports groups and a network of large companies that can offer opportunities and funding. In addition to this, we deliver impactful community programs, including a young sports influencers program helping young people become leaders in their communities. We also recently ran a program with Nike which supported young black entrepreneurs in London who had ideas for using sport to drive social change.
The problem is the full value of sport isn’t fully understood and the government doesn’t seem to recognize the value for money it offers.
For every pound invested in community sport, there is a social return of six pounds on areas such as community cohesion, educational output and reduced crime.
But unlocking this social value requires funding from government, big brands and large sports organizations. We exist to facilitate this while driving sports to become more diverse and more sustainable.
How does grassroots sport help develop the leaders of tomorrow?
These grassroots organizations are established and run by real community leaders – individuals driven to make ends meet under challenging conditions, source investment and equipment, work with public institutions and inspire others including young people who see them as relatable role models and wish to follow in their footsteps.
Often, these individuals are from diverse backgrounds and minority groups, so by supporting them not only are you cultivating great future leaders but you’re driving leadership diversity at the same time.
The significance of grassroots level sport is plain to see. If given the appropriate guidance and support, this initiative can help the volunteers of today become the leaders of tomorrow.
Simon Cummins is Chair of the Board of Trustees for Sported.
If you would like to find out more about how we work with Sports organizations, please contact Simon Cummins directly, or get in touch with us here. You can also find your local Odgers Berndtson contact here.
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