Why it's vital we give grassroot sports coaches the support they need

Spond is an award-winning, free app that removes the pain points around grassroots sport organisations with over 850,000 monthly active users. In this exclusive blog, Spond COO, Trine Falnes, explains why the company made the move to become the lead sponsor of Active London 2020.

Now, more than ever, it’s vital we give grassroots sport coaches the support they need.

Every week across the UK, millions of volunteers give up their time to coach young people and adults in a sport they love. 

Thanks to them, 8 million of us are able to enjoy grassroots sport in our local communities. 

The time we spend playing sports and sharing common interests is priceless, leaving us fitter, happier and healthier.

In 2019, we commissioned Censuswide to conduct a survey of grassroots sport organisations, which indicated that more than 70% of coaches spent more than two hours a week on admin and organisation.

More strikingly, over a quarter spent more than seven hours.

Pain points, including the scheduling and management of events, ensuring attendance, timekeeping and spending time managing Excel spreadsheets rather than getting down to the main business of coaching, are all areas that we need to think about if we’re going to give grassroots sport coaches the support they need.

And it’s vital now, more than ever, that we look to do that.

The impacts of covid-19 have created an additional level of complexity for the grassroots sport and physical activity sector; it’s clear that this is only going to increase the challenges that everyone working at community levels face.

As a company, we made the decision to create a product that’s designed to deliver all the best bits of participating and nothing else, ultimately bringing people together in a meaningful way through sport.

We streamline and simplify everything in one app to save organisers hours of administration every week, support their communications with participants, and allow the collection of vital money that keeps grassroots sport moving.

By reducing the time spent on administrative work, we help bring the joy back for coaches and volunteers, and help to prevent them from feeling overstretched, especially in these uncertain times.

As this year’s Active London focuses on the vital issue of inequality in physical activity and sport, we were delighted to partner up with the conference and show our commitment to helping more people in London to gain the benefits of taking part in sport.

We firmly believe that technology and apps, like Spond, can play an important role in making volunteering and organising easier and encourage more people to raise their hands and take on roles in the sporting community.

By doing so, we are confident that not only will today’s coaches and volunteers feel better supported, but they will be better-placed to support more people from all backgrounds to get involved and be a part of the incredible community of grassroots physical activity and sport.

Spond is a free app with a clear mission, to make the organisation of grassroots sport as easy as humanly possible, so activity leaders, coaches, players and families can spend more time doing what they love.

Launched in Norway in 2016, Spond now has over 850,000 monthly active users globally and 2.5 million events are created on the app each year.

Spond provides a centralised, simple-to-use system that saves grassroots coaches hours in admin time every week. It also helps safeguard children, enables organisers to comply with data protection regulations, and facilitates fundraising and crowdfunding for sports clubs.

Spond was founded by CEO Per-Otto Wold, the serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, and its investors include Devin Wenig, CEO of ebay, and Johan Brand, Founder of Kahoot!

This September, the app was revealed as the winner of the Most Innovative Sports App at the 2020 Sports Technology Awards, the leading global celebration of tech-led innovations in sports.

Hailed by judges as “exceptional, emerging as one of the slickest sports organising tools out there”, Spond not only lessens the workload and brings people together, but also takes care of key items such as managing attendance, ensuring GDP, privacy and communications, and enables payments.

Download the app for free on the App Store or Google Play.