Overview

National charity StreetGames wanted to understand the impact it was having, how it was organising itself in order to achieve this impact and the value of its work.

The Challenge

StreetGames is a national charity that seeks to enable young people living in disadvantaged communities across the UK to access sport within their own local communities. The charity advocates the use of Doorstep Sport as a form of community engagement and delivery and places a particular emphasis on working in partnership with other organisations sharing a similar approach. In 2013 Street Games asked Substance to undertake a research project which would report how they delivered against their stated aims of creating stronger and safer communities, promoting social action such as volunteering and improving health and well-being.

How we helped

Substance framed the research around the charity’s core objectives of Changing Sport, Communities and Lives. This initially involved a literature review and analysis of the data and information collected in-house by StreetGames alongside a round of interviews with key personnel and a sample of delivery agents to refine our understanding of how StreetGames’ short, medium and long-term objectives might be aligned to these goals. From this we sought to map the charity’s funded programmes and activities to the achievement of its ultimate goals through the development of a Theory of Change. We then used this Theory of Change to help us establish:

• Whether StreetGames is working with the right people and delivering the right activities to meet its goals
• Which activities and organisations are proving the most effective in helping StreetGames achieve its goals
• Ideal type organisational and delivery profiles
• How to monitor performance and measure impact on an ongoing basis.