How Do We Produce the Participation Numbers and Evidence Grant Funders Ask For Without Weeks of Counting?

Question 7: how many participants, broken down by age and gender?

The club is applying for a grant towards new floodlights, a changing room upgrade or a set of goals for the girls' section. The funder, perhaps a national sports council, a local council fund or a charitable trust, asks for evidence: how many people take part each week, how many are under 16, how many women and girls, how many from local areas the funder prioritises, and how that has changed in the last two years.

The club secretary has squad lists, some of them out of date. She texts each coach: 'roughly how many come to training?' The answers vary from precise to 'about twenty'. Gender and age are worked out from the names. The figures that go into the form are the club's best guess. A year later, the funder asks for a monitoring report showing the difference the grant made, and the club has to guess again.

Why the numbers are never to hand

• Attendance at training and matches is not recorded, or is recorded differently by each coach.
• Membership data does not hold the categories funders ask about, such as age band or local area.
• Casual participants, taster sessions and walking or recreational groups are not counted at all.
• Nobody has comparable figures from previous seasons.
• The data that does exist is spread between club apps, spreadsheets and paper registers.

What you collect about members, and particularly sensitive details, is for your committee and your data protection policy. We only collect what you decide to, with the consent or basis your policy sets.

What guessing costs the club

Weaker applications, because a funder can tell the difference between measured figures and estimates. Monitoring reports that are hard to complete and may not show the effect a grant really had. Volunteer time spent reconstructing numbers. And missed opportunities, because some funding rounds open and close quickly, and a club without figures ready does not apply.

We cannot promise that any application will succeed. Better evidence simply means your application says what is true, clearly.

Light-touch attendance linked to your members

The trick is making recording quick enough that coaches actually do it. Many club apps record attendance already; if yours does, we connect it to reporting. Otherwise we build a small tool.

1. Coaches mark attendance at a session on their phone from the squad list, with taps rather than typing, including a quick 'new or guest' option.
2. Squad lists come from your membership or registration data, which holds age band, gender and home area only if your policy allows it, and only as the club already collects it.
3. Casual sessions (walking football, back-to-netball style sessions, holiday camps) are counted the same way, even for non-members.
4. Reports produce the figures funders usually ask for: unique participants, regular participants, sessions held, broken down by the categories you record, and compared with previous seasons.
5. Reports use counts only, never names, so figures can be shared with a funder without personal data.
6. When a grant is awarded, the targets in the application are added as a baseline, so the monitoring report later compares like with like.

The next funding round

The secretary opens the participation report, filters the last twelve months and copies the figures into the application. They are real numbers, collected week by week by coaches tapping through a squad list. A year later, the monitoring report compares the same measures before and after the grant, whatever they show, because the club recorded them.

Is your club guessing its numbers?

• Grant forms are filled in with estimates from coaches.
• Attendance is not recorded at training or matches.
• You cannot compare participation with previous seasons.
• Monitoring reports for past grants were hard to complete.
• Casual and recreational sessions are not counted.