West Yorkshire Sport (WYSport) is a charitable trust whose purpose is to “To improve quality of life in West Yorkshire by: increasing the number of people being actively involved in sport, active recreation and physical activity; and supporting the fulfilment of potential”.
It is one of 45 county sport partnerships in England that is funded to offer 6 core services to our partners:
Co-ordinating the Network
Managing Sports Programmes
Event Organisation
Consultancy, Advice and Guidance
Education and Training
Communication and Advocacy
West Yorkshire Sport has a flat organisational structure comprising of a CEO, Operational Manager, 6 development managers and 7 development officers and a central services team that covers 2 CSPs (SYSport and WYSport). This flat organisational structure leads to high autonomy within our roles.
My role within WYSport is as a development officer working with the Children and Young People team. I am responsible for the delivery of 2 programs over 2 districts as well as managing the relationships within those districts.
Analysis of the problem
One of the difficulties I encounter within my role is when distributing funding from the sportivate program throughout the Calderdale District.
The sportivate program is a £56 million Lottery funded London 2012 legacy project that gives young people the chance to discover a sport that they love. The programme targets 11-25 year-olds who are inactive access to six-to-eight weeks' of free or subsidised coaching in a range of sports. After the six-to-eight has finished they will be supported to continue playing sport/staying active.
The amount of funding each district gets is calculated by the number of 11-25 year olds that reside with that district (including the student population). This method dictates that Calderdale as a district has a relatively small amount of funding to distribute compared to Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees and Wakefield. This leads to each funding round being