Ensuring all children feel welcome in park and recreation-sponsored youth sports

THE RESULT

A comprehensive toolkit with research-backed messaging and designed, customizable collateral (in both English and Spanish) that park and recreation professionals can easily use to effectively engage with parents and caregivers

MEDIA

Full Communications Toolkit: Attracting Families to Youth Sports Programs (Toolkit, including customizable graphics, language and research)

Provided Services

• Research

• Messaging

• Branding and Materials Creation

…from increasing their chances to grow up healthy, to building confidence and lifelong skills like teamwork, to being more likely to succeed in school and in their careers.

Yet the average child drops out of youth sports by age 11, potentially missing out on all of these lifelong benefits. 

Increasing access to youth sports is a central part of the National Recreation and Park Association’s (NRPA) mission. NRPA believes all kids deserve a fun, safe and welcoming place to play and thrive – and our team wholeheartedly agrees.

We started by conducting robust research to gather audience insights and data to set park and recreation professionals up for success. The research phase included:

• a thorough landscape analysis to learn about parent and family values, barriers and perspectives when it comes to youth sports; 

• analyzing data about what kids value about sports programs; 

• defining who our most important audiences were and developing data-backed core messages to speak directly to them;

• testing these messages with target audiences and messengers – including parents, caregivers and park and recreation professionals – through focus groups and surveys;

• digging deep into our landscape analysis, focus group and survey data to identify what our target audiences most need to hear, as well as understand the needs of the messengers – park and recreation professionals – so they feel bought-in, confident and excited to use the toolkit we would create; and

• translating our months of research into powerful core messages that speak to what's most important to all of our target audiences.

The final toolkit, which featured collateral in both Spanish and English, included: 

• data-backed core messages and sample deliverables (such as press releases and website language) to ground the campaign – ensuring all families see themselves in this campaign and that compelling messages make them feel excited about park and recreation-sponsored youth sports;

• customizable social media, website and email graphics – featuring beautifully designed, branded collateral with inclusive images and accessible graphics; 

• easy-to-update postcards, posters and fliers – helping reach families in many ways;  

• sample social media posts – sharing easy-to-personalize templates to amplify the campaign across the country; and

• recommendations for using materials and engaging with families – providing clarity for park and recreation professionals

Finally, we created strategy recommendations for distributing the toolkit and recommended metrics to track the campaign’s success.