Measuring the social responsibility of a sports organisation: where to start, and with which tools
A sports organisation that makes a commitment, to safeguarding, inclusion, the environment or its local area, always ends up asking itself the same question: what does all this produce, and how do we know? The measurement of social responsibility has made a great deal of progress in recent years, and the figures exist, in Belgium as elsewhere. This article presents the three ways of measuring, with their results, then details the one best suited to a club, a league or a federation that is starting out: the survey of its stakeholders. It draws on concrete experience gained in a national federation, and comes with a survey template to download.
Contents
1. Why measure
Measuring serves the organisation itself first of all. A social responsibility approach mobilises time, volunteers and money; knowing what it produces makes it possible to concentrate efforts where they count and to stop what does not work. Measuring then serves to convince: local authorities, foundations and sponsors are glad to fund projects whose effects can be described and quantified, as we explain in our article on impact sponsorship. Finally, measuring is becoming a requirement: UEFA licensing requires clubs to have a sustainability lead, a strategy and five policies (equality and inclusion, anti-racism, child and youth protection, football for all abilities, environment), and more than five hundred European clubs are already engaged in this process. Federations in other disciplines are following suit.
2. Three ways to measure, and what each one brings
Monetised social value
The first approach translates into euros what sport brings to society. The SROI model developed by UEFA with the World Health Organization was applied to Belgium in 2021: for a single discipline, grassroots sport generates around 2.1 billion euros of value per year, or almost 5,300 euros per participant. Mental well-being accounts for almost half of it, the social contribution for 580 million (including 460 million of volunteer work) and health savings for 41 million, with for example ten thousand cases of diabetes avoided. In England, Sport England publishes every year the social value of community sport: 122.9 billion pounds for 2023-2024, and 4.38 pounds returned for every pound invested, calculated from a large national participation survey, the value of well-being and the prevention of fourteen diseases.
These figures are valuable for talking to public authorities, and a local authority can use them to estimate the value of its own sports network. They do, however, measure sport in general; they say little about what an organisation produces in addition thanks to its social responsibility approach.
Programme impact
The second approach tracks the results obtained with the participants of a programme. In England, the 72 clubs of the English Football League have measured the impact of their foundations since 2019 with a common method and a shared data platform: for the 2021-2022 season, 865 million pounds of social value, 840,000 participants, 580,000 hours of sessions and 6,744 partnerships, with effects attributed to physical health, mental well-being, education and employment. Laureus Sport for Good tracks in the same way more than 324,000 participants in its programmes in 2025, 58% of them girls and women. This approach requires indicators defined in advance and regular collection, often through a questionnaire before and after the action. It is the one described in our article on community sport, and which the community sport project template makes it possible to set up.
Stakeholder perception
The third approach asks the people who experience the organisation on a daily basis, members, parents, volunteers, coaches, employees, partners, what they know, perceive and expect of its commitment. Research has validated measurement scales in three dimensions, social, environmental and economic, made up of statements that the respondent rates from one to five, such as "the club strives to support social causes" or "the club takes part in environmental actions". A study carried out in 2024 among 250 members of a tennis club shows that perceived social responsibility explains almost a quarter of members' trust in their club, that environmental actions have the most marked effect, and that this perception acts on member loyalty only through the trust it creates. Other work observes the same mechanism among supporters of professional clubs and among people living near sports events.
This third approach is the one we recommend to any organisation that is starting out. It costs little, it can be done in-house, it gives results within a few weeks, and it reveals things the other two do not see.
3. The stakeholder survey: what it reveals
Within a national federation, at the end of a four-year strategic cycle devoted to social responsibility, an impact survey was carried out among 616 respondents, with a weighting system guaranteeing a balanced representation of the different stakeholders, and supplemented by semi-structured interviews with employees and partners. The objective was threefold: to evaluate the current initiatives, identify areas for improvement and understand the internal and external perception of the strategy. The whole exercise was part of an approach aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, UEFA's social responsibility policies and the Global Reporting Initiative standards, which served as a common basis for analysing the federation's contribution and reporting on it.
The results first showed that awareness of the initiatives varied greatly from one pillar to another, only one being really known to most people. Respondents underlined the importance of the actions on safeguarding, accessibility and the environment, while insisting on the need for clearer, more visible and more structured communication. And above all, the strategy itself, as an overall identity, remained little known: people appreciated the actions without connecting them to an overall approach.
The survey also had a second function: to compare perceptions between the beginning and the end of the strategic cycle, on the same statements, rated from one to five.
| External impacts (all respondents) | Start of cycle | End of cycle |
|---|---|---|
| The federation has a more sustainable image | 3.36 | 3.01 |
| The federation works more closely with organisations specialised in sustainability | 3.43 | 2.94 |
| The federation is an inspiring organisation that leads the way on the social and environmental aspects of sport | 3.36 | 3.18 |
| Internal impacts (employees and management) | Start of cycle | End of cycle |
|---|---|---|
| I have more knowledge about sustainability in sport | 3.30 | 3.54 |
| In my daily activities, I think and act more in favour of sustainable development | 3.59 | 3.86 |
| I dare to ask my colleagues, partners and suppliers questions about sustainability | 3.46 | 3.40 |
Reading these two tables is the central lesson of the exercise. Inside the organisation, four years of work bore fruit: staff say they are better informed and act more on a daily basis, a sign that internal awareness-raising worked. Outside, perceptions fell on all three statements, even though the actions had multiplied. In other words, the federation had done more, and was seen less. The conclusion imposed itself: external communication on social and environmental actions became the priority of the next cycle, with a cross-cutting communication plan tasked with creating a shared understanding, carrying the key messages and inspiring changes in behaviour. The survey will be repeated at the end of the next cycle, with the same statements, to measure the change.
What to take from this. A perception survey measures two distinct things, and it is the gap between the two that is instructive: what people know about your approach, and what they think of it when they know it. An action that is appreciated but unknown calls for communication; an action that is known but criticised calls for correction; an expressed expectation that nothing covers calls for development. And asking the same questions at the beginning and the end of a cycle turns the survey into a genuine steering instrument: it is the comparison over time that reveals what is progressing and what is falling back.
4. Building your survey in five steps
Step 1: choose the stakeholders
List the groups that matter to your organisation and decide which ones you will survey: the athletes (and their parents for minors), coaches and volunteers, staff, partners and sponsors, affiliated clubs for a federation, the local authority and neighbouring associations. Each group will receive the same questionnaire, with a profile question that will later allow you to compare the answers. For about ten key people, plan a half-hour interview in addition: interviews give the why that the figures do not.
Step 2: define what you want to learn
A good survey fits in five blocks: awareness of the approach (does the respondent know it exists, through which channel did they hear of it), perception of each pillar of commitment (safeguarding and safe environment, inclusion and diversity, environment, local roots and solidarity, governance and transparency), expectations and priorities for the future, trust in and attachment to the organisation, communication preferences and, if you plan to repeat the survey, a few statements on progress asked identically at each edition. Three open questions at the end of the questionnaire collect what the grid did not anticipate.
Step 3: write
Formulate short statements, to be rated from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree), with a "don't know" option: this option is essential, since it precisely measures awareness. Aim for twenty-five to thirty-five statements, or eight to ten minutes to answer. Test the questionnaire with three or four people before sending it, and correct anything that made them hesitate.
Step 4: distribute
Guarantee anonymity and say so clearly. Distribute through the channels each group actually uses (newsletter, messaging groups, parents' meeting, e-mail to partners), for three to four weeks, with two reminders. A response rate of 15 to 25% is common for a broad survey; it rises markedly when coaches or club leaders personally relay the request.
Step 5: analyse
For each statement, calculate the share of "don't know" (awareness) and the average rating of the people who answered (perception). Compare the groups with each other: parents and volunteers rarely perceive the same things as staff. Then rank the expectations expressed by frequency. This analysis fits in a few pages and can be presented in one meeting.
5. Reading the results and taking action
The most useful reading crosses two questions for each action or each pillar: is it known, and is it appreciated? This crossing gives four situations, and each calls for a different response.
Known and appreciated: this is your base. Showcase it in your communication and your funding applications, and measure it every year to check that it holds.
Appreciated but little known: this is the most frequent situation, and the least costly to correct. Targeted, regular and embodied communication does more than a new project.
Known but criticised: listen to the interviews and the open questions, correct the action or explain its limits. Ignoring this quadrant costs trust.
Expected but absent: these are your development priorities for the following year, to be written into the action plan with indicators.
The results then feed your organisation's action plan and annual report. Our article on sustainability reporting shows how to integrate this data into a readable report, and the survey, repeated every year or every two years, becomes your main indicator of progress: rising awareness and steady perception are the two signs of an approach that is taking hold.
6. The survey template to download
To save you from starting from a blank page, we provide an impact and perception survey template (Word, to adapt) built on the validated scales and on the experience described above. It contains the complete questionnaire (profile, awareness of the approach, perception by pillar, expectations, trust, communication, open questions), a block of statements to repeat from one cycle to the next, a semi-structured interview guide to supplement the survey, and an analysis grid to sort your results into the four situations above. It transfers easily into an online form.
Measuring the social responsibility of a sports organisation starts with a simple question asked of the right people: what do you know about what we do, and what do you expect from us? The answers are often worth more than a long report.
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Actitude 360 supports clubs, federations and local authorities in measuring their social responsibility: designing and analysing the stakeholder survey, choosing indicators, action plan and report. We have run this kind of exercise at the scale of a national federation.
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