A great first step is to discover the community resource you’ve already got on your doorstep and to find out what your local community wants from you.
A quick way to do this is by creating a short form. You can use Google Forms, or you can just send an email questionnaire out. Ask every parent, volunteer and player what their current occupation is. With that information, you know who you can call upon for support when you’re looking for a certain skill set. It could be marketing, ground removals, legal support, or anything that’s going to be useful to your club in the future.
To get people to do it, you might want to offer a small incentive like a voucher or a football.
But perhaps the best incentive of all is to ask people in your community what they are actually looking for from your club. More teams? Diverse teams – such as Walking Football? Exercise classes like yoga or Zumba? Family events, better facilities, volunteering opportunities?
Once you know want people want, you’re in a much better position to engage your community by answering their needs and giving them what they want.
What’s more, by finding out what people want from you, you can at the same time also find the people you need to provide it. It’s a win-win for everyone.
A good example of a club doing this is in Dudley, when they used the information they gathered from this exercise to create their own discount card. People could register their business or consultancy with the club and the card would offer people discounts off their services. They found a way to connect the community, to help local businesses find new customers, whilst growing their own club resources in the process.
So what are the biggest challenges clubs face when it comes to community?
A big challenge is getting more use of existing facilities and being more outward-facing. Your club might only uses your facilities for four hours on a weekend, or maybe not at all during summer holidays. But the reality is, there’s so much opportunity to create partnerships with the local community, which in turn brings funds into the club and gives the community something they’ve perhaps not had before.
Meeting real community needs is good news for everyone.
A great example is a club which wanted to introduce a summer programme, but thought they hadn’t the budget to do so. Introducing them to the HAF project – a Marcus Rashford-led campaign which uses government funding – we enabled children on free school meals access to healthy holiday activities.
The club has now massively increased its impact in the community, made new connections and found a way to make them more sustainable with new funding opportunities.
Russel Smith, our Community Club Consultant lead, shares other experiences of positive community engagement he’s helped create.
“One project I worked on focused on an area of Birmingham which was in the top 10 most deprived in the country. It’s still going today. Run by two fantastic volunteers, Paul and Errol, they regularly get 500 young people to play football every week for free, at Hadley Stadium.
“Offering something consistently, removing barriers such as cost - I’ve seen how this changes lives, and to say they’ve done this completely volunteer run - it’s just an incredible story. And it’s not just football, they’ve really made this a bigger community project offering things like bike repairs and starting a bike riding project. The impact it’s had on young people in that community and their families is something I’m astounded and proud of.
“For me, it’s that long-lasting community impact I see from such projects.”
So what does community engagement mean to Russel?
“Essentially it’s helping clubs to help themselves become more sustainable through investments. I use a model called asset-based community development. It focuses on how you can use your existing assets to create sustainability. Focusing on what you’ve got, rather than what you haven’t.
“So for example, a facility I worked with recently had a school next door to them which they’d never collaborated with. We got them on the same page, to work together so they shared their resources. Now that club has been able to develop their facility further with new investment, and the school gets access to a new facility too which gives their kids more opportunities. It’s a win-win situation.”
The Club Programme by England Football can help you better engage with your community, and have a positive impact on people’s lives.
By providing guidance, and connecting you with an incredible network of people who’ve done this before, we can help you to make the best of your facilities to improve lives in your community. It brings benefits to people who need support, and big advantages to your club in bringing people through your doors.