Football projects
are often the most successful when it comes to engaging disadvantaged youth
OPPOSITE; IT’S ABOUT EVERY SINGLE PERSON, AND THAT’S EXCITING FORMULA 1 IS THE ELITE SPORT OF ELITE SPORTS. SPORTED IS THE EXACT
participation, but as a means of helping young people. “There were several thousand sports
clubs out there, many of them very small, which were struggling quite hard to survive,” says Mills. “The people that run them are local heroes, but nation- ally there has been very little exposure for these clubs. Individually they are all scrabbling around for funding and re- sources and there was no overarching organisation to help them. “Jo said she thought there was an
opportunity to set up an umbrella organ- isation to represent all of these clubs. If we can do that, she said, it would really deliver on our promise of inspiring a gen- eration.” They spent the next year trying to
find these clubs and work out what they needed, coming to the conclusion that they required several different things. “They needed information, because
they’re pretty much on their own,” says Mills. “They wanted people to help them with their business plans and they want- ed to raise money.” Sported now has 2,500 member clubs, which must meet the criteria of using
Issue 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
sport for some sort of social purpose. The organisation is free to join and members get access to the Sported site with all of the information and data on it. It also has around 250 active, trained volunteer mentors, who help the clubs with anything from putting together business plans to negotiating lower rents for premises. If the clubs need funding for signifi-
cant projects, Sported will assist them with raising money and will also put its own funding in. So far, it has awarded grants of more than £2.4m, and has helped its members find a further £4m from other sources.
PARR FOR THE COURSE Jo Stocks has led Sported for the past five years in her role as director, but this year it was decided that the organisa- tion needed a chief executive. Adam Parr joined as CEO in April, with Stocks con- tinuing as director. For Parr, joining Sported represents
a huge change from the glamorous, highly competitive and at times fraught world of Formula 1, where he spent five years as CEO and then chairman of the
Williams team. “Formula 1 is the elite sport of elite sports, because there are only 24 people in the world who do it,” he says. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to get into. “Most sports have a development ele-
ment to them, so you can reach out into the community. You can’t do that with Formula 1 – there is zero development. Sported is the exact opposite; it’s the inverse of elite sport. It’s about every single person, so that’s very exciting.” What was it really like leading the Wil-
liams team? “Educational,” says Parr, carefully. “It’s an amazing sport. It’s per- sonal for the drivers and it’s very, very competitive. There’s no getting together in the bar after the race.” I ask whether Parr took any lessons
from his time with Williams. “There’s one overwhelming lesson from Formula 1,” he says. “If you measure stuff, and you hold yourself accountable – or in the case of Formula 1 90 million people hold you accountable – it’s amazing what progress you can make. “In 2010, when we stopped refuelling
the cars in pit stops, it took 3.9 seconds to do a pit stop and change the wheels
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