Participation and Funding

[distracted]

Taking this off the event structure review thread:

...you will be much better off putting your energies into schools development which I'm sure will produce legions of M21s in years to come! No matter what they say that is the message BOF is actually giving out and that is what I am going to start telling all the clubs who continue to contact me asking for information

I'm not sure how well publicised this has been, but there is soon to be a fairly radical shift in the allocation Sport England funding, and one of the changes is how they view participation. There are notes in both the May 2007 management committee and June 2007 Council meeting minutes which hint at these.

One of the things I recall being told at the South Central AGM, when Mike Hamilton and Neil Cameron came down to visit the association, was that sport participation figures will soon be based only on those 16+ i.e. young adults, and so there also needs to be a shift in the target groups. Development officers will then (I would hope) be looking to boost numbers from sixth form colleges, universities etc - something which (certainly with the universities) is currently reliant on the people there to try to keep their clubs alive in too many cases, with little or no external support. I know there are limited resources, but have often wondered why so much of the development effort is thrown at schools whilst there is little done elsewhere - why those in charge feel this is the best route.

There are also other funding changes that will affect orienteering, one of the major ones is regionalisation of funding from the Sports Councils. I have a feeling some of these changes are related to/caused by the awarding of the 2012 Olympics - certainly suggested by looking at the list of 'priority' sports: Athletics, Gymnastics, Canoeing, Cycling, Equestrian, Judo, Rowing, Sailing, Swimming, Triathlon... I'll be interested to see what changes to development in Orienteering are needed to keep funding near the levels we currently recieve.

[Mrs H]

So, if you are right Distracted (and I'm sure you are) the sport should soon change it's emphasis from school's development to older juniors and young seniors - because that is where the likely government funding will be aimed at.

And if you are right then what a pity the sport's governing body was not independently minded enough to decide where the best development potential lay in the first place - instead of just following the funding stream into target chasing.

If this proves to be the case then I fervently hope the new emphasis is the right one (and in my opinion it is a lot closer to the mark than the last one - let's hope that "yopung adults" includes those "with children").

ps I should point out I was being sarcastic about schools development - I just thought that might not show up in your quote

[Kitch]

Following the funding is the short sighted approach.
When the funding focus changes (which you know it will) then of you go into a new spin.

It would seem to me that the best way to boost participation across all ages is to catch 'em young, as young as you can
school kids soon grow into young adults, then adults, then parents.
Its a long term investment, but they are the ones that pay real dividends.

I hope BO is wise enough to see this.
Heres a take.
Why would you be interested in young adult participation ?
Well maybe because counting kids is a bit of a false representation - kids are encouraged to try everything. A kid who takes their opportunities might end up being counted as a participant in all sorts of sports - and maybe thats what the funders have recognised (".. hang on, a country with 15 million children about 25 million of them appear to be participating in one sport or another....")
Young adults though will probably have narrowed their involvement to the sports that they are properly participating in.
So yes maybe it makes sense to count this group.
But that doesn't mean you should change your recruitment focus.

Orienteering has always paid attention to development at school age, It may not feel like it but this has worked.
You should take a look at the participation age profile in Scottish Hill running - its all the same people from 20 years ago, just 20 years older, plus a number of new joiners of 40+
Championship races get 1 or 2 junior competitors per class. Cross country and athletics are much better attended.
they have finally realised you have to put an effort into junior participation.

[graeme]

You should take a look at the participation age profile in Scottish Hill running

So I compared the biggest Scottish races, the Carnethy 5 hill race and the Scottish Orienteering Champs, which are more or less the same size.

There are more juniors in orienteering. No surprise there - it was ever thus and the hillrunners pretty well ignore juniors.

But contrary to your assertion, the hill runners outstrip us in seniors 21-40, by a considerable margin. And, as you say, athletics and cross country do even better. Even in your chosen example, it seems that encouraging junior participation gets you junior participants, but they don't continue into young adulthood (Clever me - I just noticed teenagers rebel ).

So who do we have? A whole swathe of 40+ recruited in the jogging boom, their spouses and kids. We've done fantastically well at retention of older people, and appallingly in recruiting.

I've heard this "catch 'em young and they're yours for life" argument for many, many years, but I've never seen evidence that it's true (except maybe at elite level) and repeating it doesn't make it so.

Graeme

[King Penguin]

A specific example :
Of those that started Orienteering at school in the same years as my two, no-one else is still at it.
Whilst a number were persuaded to continue attending schools events none have taken it beyond that.
They have either focussed on other sports or given up competition altogether.
I can't recall the exact number who started in each year, but the retention rate is certainly less than 10%.
I can't explain all cases, but in some I'm sure parental participation (or lack thereof) is a factor.
We got involved as a result of son 1 taking it up. We have always been "ontdoors" people but never orienteered before. Now we're hooked.

[awk]

10% retention rate would be a super result - usual expectations are a lot less.

Development is like any activity, if you put all your eggs in one basket, they're likely to get scrambled. Just focusing on recruiting at one age level would be really self-destructive, and just focusing on one aspect of an age group (e.g. schools, or corporate activity) would perhaps be even more short sighted, especially if that aspect wasn't best suited to the sport. Chasing funding is even more short sighted, and it does appear that we are about to rue the consequences of some of that - we'll see.

So to focus solely on schools, on families, on young adults, etc - none will work on their own. Development, particularly for a small sport like ours, needs to be multi-pronged, taking advantage of circumstances. It needs a national framework which enables that development to flourish, so that the local (largely volunteer) development workers can tap into a structure that helps rather than hinders, and the NGB can provide the support the local development people need, so we can all benefit from activities such as MadO, or the schools work in Cumbria, or individuals developing new university clubs, or whatever. It certainly cannot afford to be top down, which is certainly what happens all too often in sports development. It'll be interesting to see what the Participation Manager's line will be.

[Lumpy Lycra]

Why do we need external funding? Sorry if I am being hopelessly naive and ill-informed, but sometimes the most obvious questions can provide illumination...

[Jon Brooke]

My point follows on from the question by Lumpy Lycra really, but surely the thing to do is to take any money that is offered and do what is necessary to get it, provided that that does not actively detract from what the membership sees as its focus?

In other words, if the membership (or indeed the membership of an individual club) wants to make development of juniors a priority then they should get on with it and just accept that, alongside of that there will be money channelled through BO going into the development of young adults. Seems to me that there is a snowballs chance in hell of getting a funding body to change it's criteria so you might as well just make the best of what's on offer.

[Jon Brooke]

BTW - I personally happen to think that development aimed at kids is a good thing even if none of them go on to orienteer in adult life - for their sake, not ours, at least to show that there are alternatives to shopping, video games etc.

[distracted]

Re-reading my initial post, it seems to be implying things that aren't necessarily true and this wasn't the intention. I don't know if there will definitely be a shift in focus to a different group, the point I was trying to make has been put far better as the "eggs in one basket" analogy. The fact I was looking at universities in particular was partly personal experience - going to university presents different opportunities, allows you to start something new - in my case I could get to events far more regularly than I ever had the opportunity to in the past. Additionally, there are a number of people who have started orienteering at university and got hooked, but also potentially many we have missed because this can only happen at universities where there is an established orienteering club, or a strong local open club who can get people involved.

One of the clearest things to come from the conference at the weekend was the need for visible, publicised, local events to attract new people to the sport. There was little focus on particular groups, but primarily on getting more people out there in the forest experiencing orienteering. Whether this be families, youth groups, universities, schools. The funding side of things could be viewed as an interesting accompanying issue, but is clearly important to the sport if we are going to keep people like development officers, participation officers etc

[Peter B]

Question - is there potential for any of the fourteen or fifteen year old orienteers who currently run on a reasonably serious basis (start squad members or not) to go on to be high profile elites in five or ten years?

Also, would have any of the current high profile 20/21 runners who were competing for junior tour places or whathaveyou been able to get to where they are now with the funding and development?

I really hope that this doesn't mean that development of children's orienteering will be put on a total back-burner, if we could see a drop in the number of schoolkids at least trying it, let alone taking it up.

[Lumpy Lycra]

The funding side of things could be viewed as an interesting accompanying issue, but is clearly important to the sport if we are going to keep people like development officers, participation officers etc

Also, would have any of the current high profile 20/21 runners who were competing for junior tour places or whathaveyou been able to get to where they are now with the funding and development?

That's exactly what I'm trying to provoke a debate about. At what point do the shifting hoops and hurdles imposed by external funders exceed the benefits? If we stripped the sport back to the bare bones of what the participants themselves pay for, what would it look like?

Maybe we would be totally bereft without RDO A doing x y and z in region B; maybe British access to elite competions would be restricted to those with rich parents - and maybe the membership as a whole wouldn't like this one little bit. But I still think it is a useful question.

[Carnage Head]

BTW - I personally happen to think that development aimed at kids is a good thing even if none of them go on to orienteer in adult life - for their sake, not ours, at least to show that there are alternatives to shopping, video games etc.

I agree with this point - it's just a shame that it is hard to quantify the 'usefulness' of orienteering in widening people's horizons, as I get the impression that funding bodies prefer to use 'hard facts' (rather than anecdotal or qualitative evidence) when deciding which sport to fund and how much to give.

[SeanC]

"Why do we need external funding? Sorry if I am being hopelessly naive and ill-informed, but sometimes the most obvious questions can provide illumination..."

I've seen an impressive list of work done by our local RDO. I suspect a lot of the benefits of development work are intangable. How can you measure the long term effect of say high quality coaching?

Why is it that the development budget from orienteers own money is so small? I think I read recently that there are 11,000 of us in the UK. £10 per year from each of us would be a very small percentage of our yearly spend on the sport and a miniscule proportion of the average orienteers income. This would be a tidy sum for development, free of government strings.

[Mrs H]

oooo this is turning into an interesting thread with some good points

Yes i also agree that orienteering will have probably had an unquantifiable beneficial effect on most kids who try it (didn't we have some annecdotal evidence of that from a school at the smile events Harley?) but then again - we are not a social service.

Yes there seemed to have been a big intake of 21s who are now the 55s/60s but there wasn't much else around in terms of adventure sports in those days apart from climbing, canoeing, ski-ing etc which many of us also tried.

Yes it's questionable whether we actually need to target that sector to improve participation in the sport - families might be considered a much better bet - getting kids on the move (who may give up and/or come back with their own kids) and young adults who may or may not become the facilitators of the future BUT if we did want to attract the 21s then we need to do a lot more about the social element of the sport.

My kids (middle to older teenagers) continue to do the sport because they have an established social cohort going back through the junior squads over many years - they mostly like multi-day events with a camp site and a large scale social element. I think there is a reasonable chance they will stay with the sport to some degree or other while the social element survives.

I continue to do the sport because I enjoy the small adventure it provides in my middle-aged housewifely existence and because of the massive social boost it has provided me and my family, I like small local events and big multi-days with any social element. I have no interest in travelling for an hour+ to do a badge events and then travelling back.

As some of you know I have tried to work hard on the social side where I could - sensing it's value and trying to provide a multi-appeal programme at the events where I have been given a degree of responsibility. i have been very encouraged to see some people take up my concept of Extra Value Orientering and talk about the EVO of an event. If I was to turn my attentions to attracting 21s I would certainly target the universities full of young intelligent and hopefully active people looking for a cheap accessible adventure and a big social buzz - and that is what I would try to provide for them. The young people we already have in universities all over the country are a massively valuable resource - if sufficiently encouraged and supported I am sure they could make a huge impact - and yes maybe it comes down to one or two key individuals with enthusiasm and a bit of charisma - look at what GG did at Warwick from a standing start!

Interestingly the social aspect was also high-lighted in the managements committee notes (I wonder where they are suddenly getting all these good ideas from mind you they are way off the beam about beginners wanting a non-competitive environment - my MADO families and adult beginners are crazy for it )