GippSport helps build the case for what sport really delivers

For decades, community sport has measured itself the only way it could: how many people showed up. Participation numbers matter, but they don't tell funders, government or communities what actually changes in someone's life because they picked up a bat, joined a club, or turned up to training every week.

GippSport has spent the past year changing that. As the Regional Sport Assembly for Gippsland, GippSport has worked with the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB) across eight of its programmes, translating outcomes like confidence, connection and skill development into a benefit-cost ratio it can actually use to demonstrate its impact. The results, now published in a full case study, show an average return of 5.14 times investment across the portfolio, with the strongest programme returning $9.63 for every dollar spent.

Alongside applying the tool, GippSport also helped build it.

Building something the whole sector can use

When GippSport started this project, the ASVB had just two outcomes specific to physical activity: frequent moderate exercise, and increased levels of walking. Neither captured what actually happens on a sports field, in a change room, or on the sideline of a junior match.

In partnership with VicHealth and the ASVB, GippSport commissioned and funded the development of 14 new sport-specific wellbeing values, covering outcomes from confidence and motivation through to competitive and non-competitive participation. Simetrica-Jacobs, the ASVB's technical partner, carried out the statistical development, adapting research originally commissioned by Sport New Zealand using the Active NZ survey dataset to an Australian context. The values are now published as the ASVB Sport Addendum and available to every organisation in the country using the ASVB, not just GippSport.

"We wanted to move beyond participation numbers and truly demonstrate the value of community sport and our work in our communities."

Karen Ferguson, Manager Partnerships and Programs, GippSport

Closing the gap for young people

Every value in the ASVB, including the 14 new sport-specific measures, had been calibrated to adults. That meant organisations working with under-16s, who make up the large majority of community sport participants, had to rely on adult proxy values as an interim measure.

GippSport identified this as a gap in the framework and with ASVB set out to develop youth-specific sport values, recognising that young people's wellbeing trajectories are distinct from adults' in ways the existing categories didn't capture. These values are now going live within the ASVB, giving the sector, for the first time, an evidence base calibrated to the age group most community sport programmes actually serve.

"Sport has always delivered more than we've been able to prove. The ASVB tool gives us the tools to finally put a credible number on what we know is happening in our communities."

Dan Poynton, Executive Officer, GippSport

What this means for the sector

With outcomes-based funding becoming the norm across sport, health and community services, a nationally consistent methodology gives organisations a defensible basis for funding applications and board reporting, and gives funders a common way to compare investment across very different kinds of programmes.

GippSport's next priorities include finalising Social Impact Valuation Statements across its own portfolio, embedding ASVB survey tools into standard programme delivery and across the Victorian Regional Sport network with our partners through Regional Sport Victoria, and continuing to build the evidence base for increased programmatic funding against the significant imbalance compared to infrastructure funding.

The full case study, including programme-by-programme results and the methodology behind them, is available to read here: Measuring What Sport Really Does.

GippSport is the Regional Sport Assembly for Gippsland, working across one of Victoria's most geographically dispersed regions to activate communities, support clubs, and build workforce capability in community sport and active recreation.