Chane to shine
Chance to Shine has reached an important milestone. In May 2018, the charity engaged its 4,000,000th participant. This impressive achievement was celebrated at a recent House of Commons event.
Since 2005, the national charity has been on a mission to spread the power of cricket through schools and communities. Substance has been lucky enough to work with Chance to Shine since 2011, when the team first brought on Views to manage and measure the impact of the Chance to Shine Street Programme.
Chance to Shine Street brings cricket to thousands of inner-city communities. It uses the game to promote social cohesion and create opportunities particularly in diverse communities.
Prior to 2011, the charity and its 39 county cricket board partners had used a bespoke database system to monitor their Schools programme. For Street, they needed to understand socio-demographic data as well as attendance patterns and trends. They needed a system which would help the boards record granular data about participants and crucially enable Chance to Shine to aggregate data from the entire programme to demonstrate collective impact. This is why they chose Views.
Benefits
So, what were the benefits and challenges right off the bat (pun intended)? Well Richard Joyce, Operations Manager at the Charity reflected that as with any big system change those first few months weren’t pain free as coaches and co-ordinators had to learn a new system and new ways of working. But after investing in training and support for the entire team, the wins started to come through.
The immediate benefit for Chance to Shine programme managers was being able to aggregate data from all 39 county cricket boards into a single management dashboard for the first time. For the boards, the system streamlined data storage and entry and reduced admin time.
These benefits have only grown overtime but haven’t happened by accident. Chance to Shine’s management team has adopted a no compromise approach to data management and use Views both as a performance management and impact measurement tool. But along with the extra effort, comes extra reward.
By having their data in good order, Chance to Shine has been able to demonstrate to its main funders – ECB and Sport England – that they are growing the game; engaging with communities and socio-demographic groups which other sports cannot reach and crucially that they can sustain that engagement through excellent participant retention rates. Sport England’s £3m investment in Chance to Shine Street Programme, announced in November 2017, was testament to the team being able to demonstrate the difference the programme is making.
And having this data at their fingertips doesn’t just work at a national level. It also enables the Chance to Shine team to build a case for local investment in a specific ward or borough by matching Views data with commissioner requirements. Views helped Chance to Shine to report against a grant from John Lyon’s Charity in 5 North London boroughs and to access demographic data across Street cricket projects to support a bid to the Greater London Authority to demonstrate how they are bringing young people from different backgrounds together through cricket.
Richard Joyce
Richard Joyce went on to summarise Views impact on Chance to Shine when stating;
“Views has proven an excellent tool for Chance to Shine in recording essential data that enables us to fully monitor progress across our huge national programmes. The reporting tools help us to analyse and understand levels of delivery and the demographics of where and who we deliver to, helping us to evaluate the performance of our programmes against agreed outcomes in order to highlight and celebrate our successes and to identify areas for improvement.”
Chance to Shine will be sharing their learning on system implementation, performance management and building you case for investment alongside Substance at a joint workshop at the WhySport conference on 2nd October 2018.
Contact marketing@substance.net to discuss special ticket offers.
