Hull sporting charity delivers almost £4m in social benefits over past two years

A report by social value specialists at Loop into the social benefits of the sporting programmes run by the Tigers Sport and Education Trust has revealed that the charity has created more than £3.5m worth of benefits for the local community.

The Tigers Sport and Education Trust is the affiliated charity of Hull City Football Club, which aims to make a difference to people’s lives by involving them in sport. It has been delivering its Premier League Kicks (PL Kicks) programme since 2010.

This programme sees the charity engaging with thousands of local young people to encourage them to play football and take part in positive activities that promote and enable safer and more respectful communities. The free-to-attend sessions are aimed at young people aged eight to 18 years old.

Looking to demonstrate the true, positive impact this programme has on local communities, the Tigers Trust worked with social value specialists Loop, which is also based in Hull. Loop has examined the full value delivered by its PL Kicks programme for 2019 to 2020, and 2020 to 2021.

Catherine Bishop, chief executive at the Tigers Trust, said: “Loop’s report has provided us with some really valuable information that we are incredibly pleased with. In our line of work, we can really struggle to attach actual value to what we do. Our work focuses on big outcomes that are hard to quantify the fiscal, economic and social impact from.

“However, these are the very measurements that are really important to our service users, local community and funders, so Loop has enabled us to not only measure the benefits of our work, but also visualise and explain it in an accessible way too.

“We’ve been staggered to see the actual figures relating to what our work achieves in social, economic and fiscal benefits for the local area and its people. We have also been able to share this report with the EFL and Premier League, which helps us demonstrate the good we are creating through our activities and pushes for more of this work to be carried out around the country.”

Through its work, the organisation promotes the values linked with sporting success and helps to upskill participants across all age groups through practical activities, courses and events across the Hull and East Yorkshire region.

Loop’s report has covered the PL Kicks programme for 2019/20 and the Kicks Targeted programme for 2020/21 as a collective, taking into account the reduced activities that could take place during the pandemic.

The activity has been measured on the basis of the social outcomes received by the beneficiaries and staff, as well as the fiscal and economic outcomes associated with staff employed by the programme. This has demonstrated that the programme has provided impact values of £3.3m for social, £596k for economic and £48k of fiscal benefits.

Harriet Parker, operations manager at Loop, said: “Providing these activities has given much more than an outlet for young people. It has generated employment opportunities and associated fiscal and economic benefits, along with creating that all-important sense of community and connection among service users.

“Being based in central Hull, the benefits generated by the work of the Tigers Trust is ultimately creating positive benefit in our own back yard, so we have been really pleased to work with them to showcase the true value of the good it does with its PL Kicks and Kicks Targeted programme.

“It is going to continue to be a growing focus for organisations to demonstrate and quantify the impact of their activities, particularly on local communities as we continue to move through the pandemic recovery period. This is a big part of what we do – we are the social value people and firmly believe that having a measurable ‘purpose beyond profit’ is the way forward. We are on a mission to deliver success through social value and are really pleased that our report is allowing the Tigers Trust to showcase exactly what good it does.”

Having originally been founded in 2016 in response to the Social Value Act 2012, Loop offers both consultancy and software services, with its leading social value calculator being accredited by Social Value UK.

The calculations within the report are underpinned by two key analysis frameworks – Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Economic Impact Analysis (EIA) – which are approved by HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and the Office for National Statistics.

For more information about Loop, please visit www.loop.org.uk and for more information about the Tigers Trust, please visit www.tigerstrust.co.uk.