Active Gloucestershire

About the work

We have worked with Active Gloucestershire on an evaluation of the Together Fund since its launch during Covid-19. The Together Fund provides small pots of money to grass roots organisations to help them continue or to develop physical activity opportunities. Following this work we then supported an evaluation of School Games work to collect and showcase learning around engaging different audiences in School Games activities.

What we did

Our work on the Together Fund involved closely aligning with the requirements placed on the Fund by Sport England. We did this by undertaking an Evaluation Framework session to understand what Active Gloucestershire wished to understand from the work and then aligned this with Sport England requirements. This meant we made a single approach to grass roots organisations for information, rather than making multiple requests from different organisations.

We combined the data collection with a series of insight visits and telephone calls. We also held a series of learning sessions with the Active Gloucestershire team to help collect further insight and share feedback from the evaluation.

For the School Sport work we focused on a case study approach. This allowed us to undertake a deep dive into the different projects undertaken by the School Games Organisers.

The difference we made

The work and report has helped Active Gloucestershire consider the role that small grants play in helping organisations new to sport and physical activity to take a first step. It has also highlighted how important community sport opportunities are for people of all ages and small pots of money can help with the unexpected costs organisations experienced as the exited the Covid-19 pandemic. The work has also helped showcase the innovative ways that sport and physical activity can be used with different groups and different audiences to help deliver wider sport for development objectives.