Wonderful things happen when the worlds of football & dementia touch
It’s obvious when you think about it. That a football club would run programmes that contribute to the social cohesion of their community: their fans. If it’s not obvious, then perhaps you haven’t yet started looking at every business as a potential impact maker. And they are. Every single one of them.
Yesterday, on a flight back from Milan — where impact was not only on my mind, it was also the theme of our Annual general meeting of cultural heritage lovers, innovators & professionals — I read an article featuring businesses that give back to their community. A nice surprise in an inflight magazine — thanks easyjet! First on the list was Aberdeen Football Club and as I read about their activities I could almost see their theory of change forming in front of my eyes.
Aberdeen FC Community Trust — established in 2014 as the official charity partner of the football club develops activities across 5 areas: positive activity, health & wellbeing, equality & inclusion, good citizenship & learning, And one of their projects won the ‘Best community and social responsibility programme’ at the recent European Club Association (ECA) awards.
“To provide support and opportunity to change lives for the better” — mission statement of Aberdeen FC Community Trust
The winner was the Dementia Friendly Well-being project which runs a range of activities for people in the local community living with dementia. From enabling ex players to share memorabilia and reminisce about past football matches though to activities designed to be fun and increase mobility like walking matches and afternoon discos, it’s certainly not what you might expect a football club to be doing on the side.
Why is this such a compelling story of impact to share?
Because it’s an obvious and yet surprising example of impact. In the work we do at Europeana to support the cultural heritage sector open up their collections so that more people can benefit from having access to them, impact feels a natural end product.
We’re at the start of the journey of drawing out examples of the impact that we know happens in our sector so that we can articulate them better. So we’re looking around in other sectors, and for examples of where other business achieve the type of impact that happens in our sectors.
If you’ve done any work in the area of impact measurement, assessment and management, you’ll have gone through a process of understanding your stakeholders — the people you expect to see a change in. What their needs are, where their pains are and you’ll have taken the time to to look at what you can or will do to meet their needs, or relieve their pains. We’ve been doing a bit of this ourselves in the past year, so I can almost hear the conversations around the dementia wellbeing project developing…
… Members of our community are among the 93,000 people living in Scotland with dementia — how can we use our experiences to help meet some of their needs? And the needs of the 650,000 unpaid carers in Scotland? How can we make their lives a little bit better?
… If we could get some of our alumni to talk to them about old matches & footballing memories that might contribute to better mental health — and we know that is a factor in the quality of life of people with dementia.
…How can we adapt the physical activities we run for schools to the needs of the elderly? We need to slow things down, how about a walking football match, or an afternoon disco — they both encourage social engagement and physical activity, again both influential factors in quality of life.
But what I find most striking about this project is the simplicity of the narrative. Without any supporting evidence, it’s really easy to connect with what you imagine the impact of the dementia wellbeing project to be.
Every businesses is potential impact maker. Every single one of them.
Aberdeen FC aren’t alone in their sector. In 2016 PSV Eindhoven won the ECA award for their PSV United project to increase integration within local neighbourhoods and teach youngsters to treat each other with respect. Before that it was Arsenals employability programme that runs courses to help reduce the barriers for local people finding employment.
And they aren’t alone in extending their reach to work on activities that aim to help people living with dementia and their carers. Switch back to the cultural heritage sector and the House of Memories is a beautiful example. A museum led awareness programme which offers training, access to resources, and museum-based activities to enable carers to provide person-centred care for people living with dementia.
These projects — and the five other football clubs that won the award since it was established in 2010— seem to push the boundaries of corporate social responsibility. They create a new corporate label: Impact maker.
If you stop for a minute and look around your professional space, your sector, the places where your work makes a difference in peoples lives, do you see impact makers? Are you an impact maker? If you are, I’d love to hear your stories!
I’ll be sharing more about how I use agile and lean start up principles in a not for profit setting, working across a pan European network and remote teams to develop and deliver great (and effective) policy. I also write about how organisations can better understand their impact on society and culture — by designing, assessing and narrating their impact. And a little bit about my project of passion; exploring ways to increase the civic engagement of overseas citizens in a digital world.
Follow this series // ask me a question // keep in touch through Twitter, Medium and Linkedin.
