How might we better involve people in shaping the future of the sports they love?

At New Citizen Project, like much of the world, we’ve been enjoying the sports smorgasbord that is the Olympics. As fans, former organisers and slightly past our peak athletes, we have been revelling in the skill, passion and commitment people hold for the sports they love. Now, with the Olympic Games drawing to a close, and the Paralympics around the corner, we’re asking how that strength of feeling might be harnessed — how might we better involve people in shaping the future of the sports they love?

We’d argue that part of the answer lies with our National Governing Bodies (NGBs), the organisations that administer and oversee our sports; setting not just the rules but the vision in everything from the elite teams, to grassroots games played in courts, pitches and tracks across the country. If you play for a club or take part in races at the weekend you are likely already a member of an NGB and, to us, this has always seemed like an open goal (irresistible) for participation. Not just participation in the sports and pastimes themselves, but bringing together those with a shared passion to advocate for and shape their sport for the better.

However, to make this a reality we need to shift the story around sport and the role we can all play. Our work starts from the place that people can and want to shape the world around them, but are too often limited by being cast as a Subject or Consumer — having things done to or for them. Those Subject and Consumer stories are ones we can see in our NGBs. We see the Subject story, perhaps unsurprisingly when a number of our NGBs were founded in a Victorian era, in rule-setting often done behind closed doors and without meaningful consultation and in regulation that can frame membership as an obligatory pass to play. We see the Consumer story where membership in our sports is positioned as little more than an insurance product or list of discounts, rather than a chance to shape and support your sport.

But there is a different story, a Citizen story, where NGBs can champion their sports with the people that love and play them.

In a Citizen story, participation in NGBs would mean more than a pass to play, it would mean working together to innovate on new formats, to campaign to spread the sport, to share stories that create belonging and inclusion, to crowdsource knowledge on opportunities to play and crowdfund gaps to fill. There are some bright lights of participation to point to from Project Swish and Grassroots Skatespaces — Basketball England’s and Skateboard GB’s initiatives working with and through communities to create and renovate courts and parks across the country — to England Squash’s invitation for people to share stories on how we came into the sport to help others find belonging. But these examples feel like the exception rather than the norm, and with many strategic cycles running to this 2024 Olympic and Paralympic year, now is the time to think afresh about the future.

And there’s a good reason to think afresh. Reimagining how NGBs might work with people isn’t a ‘nice to do’; greater and deeper participation is about securing bright futures for our sports.

Creating meaningful memberships and participation that people want to be a part of would do many things.

For a start, we believe it could:

• create more stable funding less dependent on central pots that ebb and flow
• create ongoing conversations and open channels that mean we never go back to the safeguarding scandals that have rocked so many sports in recent times
• gain the ideas and energy to tackle the next big challenges, like the need to decarbonise our sports and face into climate change
• foster community cohesion and unlock the potential for sport to play a positive role in society
• strengthen the role of sport and physical activity in improving and maintaining the nation’s physical and mental health

For inspiration on what’s possible we can look to another national institution. We started our work on membership with one of the UK’s largest membership organisations: the National Trust. Over ten years ago National Trust membership felt to many like a visitor pass — a simple financial calculation about whether you were going to visit enough to make it worthwhile. Membership growth had slowed, members bounced between “three months free” offers with little loyalty and participation in traditional formats such as the AGM was stagnant. The big and bold change the Trust made was to see membership (and more) as being about growing the relationship between people and the places they loved. They made it clear in everything you read and received that by being a member you are actively looking after those places, and offered opportunities to get closer to them through free campaigns like 50 things to do before you’re 11?, and to protect them through initiatives like the People’s Plan for Nature. And it worked. The Trust achieved five million members three years ahead of their target, and the parallels are clear — people feel equal passion for the sports they play. This makes us ask:

How might we reimagine membership and wider participation as a relationship to grow, rather than a benefit to sell?

To answer this question, we’d like to invite 6–8 NGBs to work with us — ideally representing a range of sports — to build on and challenge these ideas over the course of a year-long inquiry, with the ambition of creating resources together that can then be used by the wider sector.

If you’re interested in finding out more, join our Discovery Call, 1–2pm on 16th September, and if you have any questions in the meantime, get in touch at [email protected]