Four Ways National Sport Bodies Are Turning Data into Decisions
Your board, Sport England and your other stakeholders all want to know more than just how many people you reached. They want to know what difference your programmes make. And, increasingly, so do you.
At Upshot, we've spent nearly 15 years working inside sport, helping governing bodies, national sport organisations and their delivery partners turn monitoring, evaluation and learning data into decisions, through our platform and hands-on MEL expertise.
Here are four organisations doing it in very different ways, and what you can take from each.
Understanding Longer-Term Outcomes
We all say sport helps young people build confidence, develop life skills and make positive choices. But how do you move beyond assumptions and show that it's actually happening?
England Boxing’s Moves Different programme is testing a big question: can boxing help prevent young people who are most at risk from becoming involved in crime, violence and antisocial behaviour?
The research compares outcomes for eligible young people randomly selected to receive either a fully funded six-month boxing programme or a free gym membership, and is being delivered with Welsh Boxing in partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund. Participating clubs use Upshot to record programme delivery and participant information in one shared system, giving England Boxing and the independent evaluation team a consistent dataset to work from.
Led by the Ending Youth Violence Lab, the evaluation is looking beyond participation numbers to understand whether boxing can support young people’s personal growth, improve behaviour and reduce their exposure to crime. The findings will help shape the programme as it grows and build stronger evidence for boxing as a crime-prevention tool across England and Wales.
England Boxing also uses Upshot across a range of community and regional initiatives, allowing different programmes to collect and manage information through a common platform.
The key takeaway: if you want to understand longer-term impact, design your monitoring around your research questions from day one, rather than bolting it on at the end.
Supporting Delivery Across Schools and Communities
If your programmes run through schools, clubs and local partners in lots of different places, you'll know the tension.
You need useful information, but every extra form is time your delivery staff aren't spending with participants.
Basketball Scotland's CashBack Community of Basketball programme is a good example of getting that balance right. Across 19 schools in Scotland, the programme tracks session delivery, attendance and progress against agreed outcomes.
With everything in one place, Basketball Scotland has a national view, while school delivery teams have a simple, consistent way to record what they do.
The approach supports reporting requirements, programme management and ongoing learning without creating separate processes for every school involved.
“We use Upshot to monitor and evaluate our CashBack School of Basketball programme. We have 19 schools using the platform to track session delivery, participant attendance and progress against a series of outcomes. Upshot allows us to centralise all the data gathered and quickly access and analyse it in a uniform way. We have saved a significant amount of admin time using Upshot and find it user friendly.”
Amy Kirkhouse, Head of Club and Community Development, Basketball Scotland
The key takeaway: you can get a clear national picture without burying the people who deliver the work in admin. Our platform is built to make recording and reporting easier for delivery teams, and what they record locally feeds straight into the national view.
Combining Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring tells you what you delivered and who you reached. Evaluation tells you what difference it made, and why.
Activity Alliance, formerly the English Federation of Disability Sport, shows how to get the best of both.
Across multiple phases of the Get Out Get Active programme, Activity Alliance has worked with a wide range of delivery organisations across the UK to increase opportunities for disabled and non-disabled people to be active together.
Alongside programme monitoring, Activity Alliance has worked closely with evaluation partners Wavehill to analyse the data in greater depth and gather additional insight through interviews, focus groups and other research activities.
Upshot provided the shared data foundation for GOGA’s evaluation. Delivery partners used the platform to record participant profiles, activity levels, attendance and programme delivery consistently across locations and over time. This gave Activity Alliance and its evaluation partners, Wavehill, a structured dataset they could combine with follow-up surveys, interviews and qualitative research to test what changed, for whom and why. The findings were grounded in participant journeys captured through Upshot, rather than isolated snapshots. They showed that the proportion of matched participants in the least active group fell from 46% to 19%, while analysis of participant characteristics and experiences highlighted the importance of trusted community networks, co-designed activities and social connection. Activity Alliance and local partners could then use this evidence to refine delivery, strengthen inclusive practice and share practical learning across the wider system.
The key takeaway: your monitoring system should feed your evaluation, not replace it. Get the routine data right, and your evaluation partners can focus on the deeper questions.
Supporting Clubs and Grassroots Delivery
For many governing bodies, the most important work happens not at national level but in affiliated clubs and with local partners.
British Weight Lifting's Raise the Bar programme is a case in point.
Delivered through local weightlifting clubs working in schools and communities, the programme aims not only to introduce young people to the sport but also to challenge perceptions of weightlifting.
For British Weight Lifting, the job is to see what's happening across lots of clubs and locations while keeping one consistent national picture. What each club records locally feeds that national view.
Collecting information from local delivery partners helps British Weight Lifting understand participation levels, manage programme delivery and demonstrate the value of the initiative to stakeholders.
The programme also highlights how governing bodies sometimes use monitoring to understand changes in awareness and perceptions of their sport, not simply participation numbers.
The key takeaway: you don't need a complex evaluation framework to get started. Sometimes the priority is simply a practical, consistent way for clubs and partners to capture information that informs decisions now and lays the foundation for deeper learning as the programme matures. Start where you are and build from there.
Different Organisations, Different Approaches
Four sports, four delivery models, four very different starting points. England Boxing is researching long-term social outcomes. Basketball Scotland is keeping admin light across 19 schools. Activity Alliance is pairing monitoring with in-depth evaluation. British Weight Lifting is building a national picture from local clubs.
What they share is a need for evidence that helps them make better decisions, not just fill in reports.
There's no single right approach. The right one depends on what you're trying to achieve, how you deliver and the questions you need to answer.
The goal isn't to collect more data. It's to use the data you already have to learn, improve and make better decisions for the participants, clubs and communities you serve.
Wherever You're Starting From
Whether your impact and insight practice is just getting going or already well established, we can help you move it forward. For some organisations, that means a platform that brings data together across programmes and delivery partners. For others, it's hands-on support with evaluation design, surveys, learning frameworks and reporting, and building your team's own MEL skills so they can do more of it themselves. Either way, it's sized to fit your team, your time and your budget.
If you're collecting plenty of data but aren't sure it's driving decisions, we'd love to hear from you. We're always happy to share what's worked (and what hasn't) for others in the sector.