Tag: sport england

Volunteering Conference – Getting to know Kristen Stephenson

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On 5th September 2018

In Community, Events and Conferences

As TeamKinetic 4th annual sports volunteering conference approaches,  we thought it would be an excellent opportunity to get to know some of our guest speakers for the event. The theme of this year’s conference is:

‘What can sports volunteering learn from the wider voluntary sector’. 

This year’s volunteering conference will allow volunteer managers, volunteers, policymakers and academics to come together to discuss best practice as well as insights in the wider voluntary sector.

DAY 1 (TeamKinetic Customers only)

  • FREE event to TeamKinetic customers.
  •  A masterclass by Steven Hall on the TeamKinetic volunteer system.
  • Customers will also be able to discuss the future software developments of TeamKinetic.

DAY 2

  • Denise Larrad – BBC Sports Personality 2017 Unsung Hero award winner
  • Kirsten Stephenson – Head of Volunteering – Sport England
  • Laura Hamilton – Volunteer Management Consultant – Laura Hamilton Consulting and member of the Association of Volunteer
    Chantel Scherer – Director of Marketing, Communications and Member Engagement at Sport & Recreation Alliance
  • Mike Howlett – Volunteer & Citizenship Lead – Sefton Volunteer Centre
  • Claire Jones – Head of Volunteering – Halton and St Helens Volunteer Centre
  • Fiona Liddell – Volunteering Development Manager – Welsh Council Voluntary Action (WCVA)

Kristen will be leading the first session at our conference with a session on…

“Volunteering in an Active Nation: How cross-sector collaboration can unlock the potential of volunteering in sport and physical activity”

Kristen has recently joined Sport England as Head of Volunteering. She leads on managing the 32 projects across Sport Englands Volunteering Funds and supporting the delivery of the strategy ‘Volunteering in an Active Nation’. These funded projects are focused on getting young people involved in making a difference through; social action, sport and physical activity and creating opportunities to get people from economically disadvantaged areas involved in volunteering.

The most important things for you as a volunteer manager at Sports England?

“A key priority for my role is to focus on how we can increase the diversity of people volunteering in sport and physical activity. I manage our Volunteering Funds which are all testing approaches to reaching people who are currently underrepresented; particularly those in lower socio-economic groups and women. This is one of the most challenging but exciting areas of my work! I am really passionate about making volunteering in sport more inclusive so that more people can experience the benefits.”

Your best or most memorable volunteering experience?

“One of my most memorable volunteering experiences has to be helping out at my running club’s midsummer relay race in my local park. It was a beautiful summer’s evening with a great turnout! I was taking on a new volunteer role- timing the runners taking part. This was a bit nerve-wracking, to begin with, and hard work but starting the big race clock and seeing everyone have a great time was totally worth it!”

What to expect from you on the day of the conference?

“Expect to find out more about Sports England’s strategic ambitions for volunteering and hear how we’re working with and learning from the voluntary sector to make these a reality. I hope people will find out more about our work to increase the number and diversity of people volunteering in sport and physical activity and perhaps be surprised at how we are working differently to achieve the aims and objectives of our strategy. I’m also really keen to hear from delegates about their work in this area too and so I hope it encourages people to come to share their ideas and what they are working on too.”

We look forward to having Kristen at the conference and learning about more Sport England’s strategy.  We hope you are as excited as we are TeamKinetic is to hear what our other guest speakers have to talk offer. Above all, we hope to see you there for a great day!

If you’re still undecided,  why not read our six reasons to attend the volunteering conference!

For more information on the volunteering conference and how to purchase a ticket. Please click this link.

 

 

How can NGBs do more with less in this new world of funding from Sport England

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On 20th December 2016

In News & Views, Sport

So as the dust settles on another funding announcement from Sport England, it’s clear we are definitely in uncharted territory. With many National Governing Bodies (NGBs) receiving significantly less than in sport-england-active-nationprevious periods we look at how the role of the volunteer will become essential in improving our sporting institution’s resilience.

The last round of funding covered 46 sports between 2013 and 2017 and with a total value of £493 million. The newly proposed £88 million spread across 26 sports, with four sports accounting for just under 50% of that funding is a deep cut to our sporting infrastructure. Sport England, operating in these austere times, have had to make some tough decisions and their new approach of encouraging NGB’s to focus on their “core market” may prove to be the best opportunity for a return on this significantly reduced investment. Only time will tell.

Further announcements are due in February, but it is doubtful that any major changes or reversals will be announced. What is clear based on the announcement yesterday is it is going to be a challenging environment for this next funding cycle.

So what do NGB’s do now?

Beyond getting all their members to start buying lottery tickets here are some ideas and thoughts that we thought it would be useful to share.

If all the NGB’s stopped existing tomorrow, would people still be playing sport this weekend?

I know this is something of a loaded question, of course, they will, but, only by relying on the ubiquitous and passionate volunteer-led sport across the country. NGB’s are still vital to the efficient delivery and development of their sports, but now they must learn to effectively leverage their volunteer base if they want to see their sport flourish under such deep cuts.

 

The growth of NGB’s over the last 20 years through the cash injection offered via lottery funding changed them in many cases into fully professional businesses that thought in terms of customers. They were more income-driven and had significant overheads to cover, as is typical during periods of rapid organisational growth. Of course, this led to improvements in a range of areas such as safety, facilities, professional levels of training, policy, etc.. and some of these improvements were drastically required. But in that jump to a more professional world, some of our traditional voluntary infrastructure struggled to keep up.

It is here that we think NGB’s can make some drastic gains with their core market. By understanding the many roles played by people at local, county, regional and even national level and what engages and motivates those individuals to give up their time is the area which could have the largest potential impact.  How many of these functions are volunteers, even though many may not self-identify as such, is one of the many questions NGB’s need to answer. How do you upskill these people, how do you empower them and how to ensure you do not rely on the same individuals undertaking all the work every week.

This next four years is an opportunity to reinvent many NGB’s from the ground up, to look at how you make them local led grassroots organisations that can simultaneously grow participation, membership and customer base. To do this requires two of the most valuable resources available, people’s time and enthusiasm.

NGB’s will have to become much better at responding to the demands of their stakeholder base, of directly engaging and understanding what the volunteers who operate their clubs and county organisations want and need.

In 2016, there have never been more ways to participate at a local and hyper-local level. With more channels available via social media; new ways to raise capital via crowdfunding and peer-led lending. NGB’s that thrive will use this technology to drive the benefits and stories about their sport locally and nationally. This will not be a top-down marketing campaign as these are often very expensive, but it will be a bottom up user led movement. An example of the type of user led content I refer to can be found on line; right now there are 13.3 million Parkour and 4.6 million Freestyle football user-created videos on YouTube.

It will be the role of the NGB’s to make it easy for participants, volunteers, helpers, and officials to create and/or find existing communities where individuals can engage directly. We have used these concepts and ideas as we have developed our volunteer management platform TeamKinetic and we continue to try to build using these principals:

  • Empower people to do it for themselves.
  • Reward and recognise them and when they do, do it in a way that appreciates what motivates them.
  • Make getting involved easy to find and then intuitive to undertake.
  • Share your successes and your failures with your community so that everyone can learn.

Our technology is not for everyone right now, but we know these principals superseded the digital realm. Not everyone wants to engage via their computers or phone, but the principals stand no matter how you look to engage with the people who make your sport happen. We find its a combination of people, policy, process and technology that allows an organisation to scale the use of volunteers effectively.

If you would like to know how we can help you reconnect with your volunteer base, how our systems and research can empower more people to get involved and how you can recognise those people; who support your organisation week in, week out. Our work and that of our partners as part of the Join In consortium is available, and we are keen to talk to all NGB’s on how we can help you do more with less. Feel free to contact me at chris@teamkinetic.co.uk or call our office on 0161 914 5757.

In response to the “Coaching and Volunteering Data Management Systems – Procurement Guidance For CSP’s.”

By

On 1st April 2016

In News & Views, Sport

TeamKinetic welcome the guidance from CSP Network and wanted to take this opportunity to clarify our service and to share with you how we think our range of applications can provide a world class Volunteer and Coaching experience.

We are offering 12 months FREE usage of our system to all CSP’s as a no risk trial.  If at the end of the trial period you are not happy with our support or service, you can export your data in its entirety. For more information on starting your free trail and pricing please get in touch here.

What we do

logo VolunteerKinetic logo-ClubKinetic
logo-AccessK logo-CoachKinetic

Our system is not only limited to Volunteer management we also offer:

  • Coach management and agency support including tools for scheduling, payments, bookings, quality assurance and feedback.
  • An integrated database that allows for activity session and club sessions to be published, updated, searched and powerful communication tools to keep your clubs informed.
  • Accreditation and access management for events of any size, with badge creation, area access controls and on-site security.

We are actively developing more modules all the time for inclusion in TeamKinetic, our complete integrated package.

How far we reach

  • Our system is currently in use across the UK and has over 45,000 users registered.
  • Over 60% of those registered have been active in the last 12 months.
  • This year our users have already logged 27,564 hours
  • Last week our sites enjoyed 10,000+ page views

Who we work with

Our sports based customers include

logo_15 VOLUNTEERS MCC logo
Print BS Thistle 7 greatersport

 

We also work with a wide range of Universities, Hospitals, Charity’s and youth organisations.

What our customers say

“GreaterSport have been working closely with TeamKinetic over the past 14 months. TeamKinetic have been able to develop the system to suit our needs as a CSP, this has included upgrades so we can now manage both volunteers and coaches on the same system. Within Greater Manchester we have seen an increase in people volunteering with our APS volunteering score rising to 13.2% – we feel a lot of this is down to the management system as volunteering has never been so easy for the users. We would highly recommend working with TeamKinetic and are excited to see our volunteer and coaching workforce growing over the next 12 months.”

Nick Lowden

Workforce Development – Greater Sport

We have built our platform on the following principals.

The End User is the most important person in our world.

TeamKinetic is incredibly easy to use.  We believe passionately that less is more.  So we use data from the end user, what they search for, what they leave positive and negative feedback on, where they are, how many opportunities they view and what type of opportunities they are.  This provides insight and a more tailored experience for every user.  This IntelligentBrokering™ ensures every user is presented with information that is up to date and relevant.

Integrated social media, access via mobile device and the ability for the user to see and share opportunities with any one at any time.

We know you don’t like to send good people on bad experiences and we love to help you recognise talent and enthusiasm by;

  • Using anonymous feedback by both volunteers on opportunities and providers on volunteers
  • Giving volunteers ThumbsUp notifications for a job well done.
  • Rewarding both on line with achievement badges and in the real world with HourTrade™, those who go above and beyond

Its our aim and ambition to help you build a sustainable and strong sporting community of officials, coaches, volunteers and participants.

Support, support and more support

Information, data, and insight is excellent and indispensable, but it means little without the right support. We pride ourselves on our after care.

  • Monday to Friday – 9:00-5:00 telephone help line.
  • Online support ticket system for bugs and new features is always available.
  • Free access for customers to our yearly development conference in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, this year with speakers from DBS discussing safeguarding in recruitment, Step Up to Serve CEO Charlotte Hill and Geoff Thompson MBE from Youth Charter,  This year we are looking at Sports Volunteering in the current landscape of austerity. Book here.
  • Close working relationship with the Sports Volunteer Research Network so you can access a raft of academic research.
  • Monthly news letter that we like you to contribute to.
  • Partnership with the Sport and Recreation Alliance

Our products never stop improving and those improvements are driven by you our customers and the feedback you provide.

No Hidden Costs

Unlike some IT providers, we aim to be transparent and up front about costs. Offering long term assurances on price and clarity on future price increases.

In most cases our licence fees cover all standard on-going costs including support, updates, hosting, and data usage.

We want you to feel confident when you invest with us.

How do we achieve all this?

We aim to provide you with a set of simple to administer online tools that make promoting, signposting and communicating with your community simple and effective.

Our services are in no way exclusive and can work alongside any other web site or web sites.

The data collected can be exported at any time by you the customer. with an extensive library of report functions.

The system is built to allow you control over content and branding so there is little need for additional development costs.

Our CRM functionality means e-mail, social, blog and SMS can all be taken care without the need for additional external services or tricky exports and delivered fully branded at the click of a button.

If you want to find out how we can help you, please feel free to call or get in touch below.

Taxing question for David Cameron that threatens community benefit of cricket

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On 24th June 2015

In News & Views

Taxing question for David Cameron that threatens community benefit of cricket

http://gu.com/p/4a3c4?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress

Council sports budgets cut by £42m

By

On 20th April 2015

In News & Views, Sport

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31624412

Regeneration Sport 22 AMore than £42m has been axed from councils’ sports and leisure budgets since 2010, a BBC survey has revealed.

Among the regions which saw the biggest losses were London and north-west England, which saw cuts of more than £12.3m.

Sports stars and charities said they were concerned cutting facilities was “short-termism” that could impact on communities’ health and fitness levels.

The government said it was investing in grassroots sport.

Some of the biggest cuts occurred in the North West, where Liverpool City Council closed Woolton Swimming Pool, saving more than £3m.

In the West Midlands, which saw £9.6m of cuts, the region’s only 50m pool – in Coventry – was among the facilities to face the axe.

And in London, where budgets were cut by £8.8m, Mornington Crescent Sports Centre in Camden was among the facilities to close.

In other regions, Sheffield lost the Don Valley Stadium, where Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill had trained, while Newcastle-upon-Tyne saw the closure of its City Pool in 2013.

David Moorcroft, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist and former chief executive of UK Athletics, said: “In times of cutbacks to public services, rightly or wrongly, sport and leisure is one of the first things to get cut.

“It’s really unfortunate because the health and happiness of the nation and communities is based around being able to access facilities that encourage people to take physical activity.

“Ultimately, if we are trying to reduce obesity among young people, you can’t really have clubs and volunteers doing all that work. Once a facility is lost, it’s gone forever. When you come out of recession, it’s very difficult to rebuild it.”

Emma Boggis, chief executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance which represents sports governing bodies in the UK, said she had “some sympathy” with local authorities “and the extreme financial pressures they are under”

“But reducing investment in sport and in leisure facilities is storing up problems for the longer-term,” she said.

“Limiting access to leisure facilities will result in greater inactivity and bigger costs to the NHS in terms of tackling conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and depression.”

Sports and leisure spending since 2010
North West -£12,372,959
West Midlands -£9,638,972
London -£8,891,367
North East -£7,147,948
East -£5,114,871
East Midlands -£5,038,980
South West -£3,347,463
Yorkshire -£3,209,581
South East £12,340,287
Total £42,421,854

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said £1bn of public money had been invested into grassroots sport through Sport England.

David Sparks, who chairs the Local Government Association, said councils had had “little choice” but to squeeze budgets.

“The reality is that, within a few years, well over half of the council tax everyone pays will have to be spent on social care,” he said.

“With demand on these life and death services continuing to rise and funding from central government continuing to fall, councils will have little choice.”

 

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