Best Software for Sport-for-Change and Community Sport Charities in the UK (2026)
A practical comparison of the leading software platforms for sport-for-change and community sport charities in the UK, covering participant tracking, outcome measurement, bookings, volunteer management and funder reporting.
Sport-for-change charities use sport and physical activity to achieve social outcomes: youth engagement, improved mental health, employability, and community cohesion. Choosing the right software to manage participants, track outcomes and report to funders is one of the most consequential operational decisions these organisations make.
TL;DR: Specialist platforms such as Upshot and Views focus on outcomes measurement for sport, while broader tools like Plinth combine case management, bookings, volunteering and impact reporting in a single system. The best choice depends on whether you need deep sport-specific outcome tracking or a wider operational platform.
Who this is for: Programme managers, operations leads and trustees at community sport charities, sport-for-development organisations, and grassroots clubs that need to demonstrate social impact to funders.
Why Software Matters for Community Sport
Community sport in the UK is a large and growing sector. According to Sport England's Active Lives Adult Survey (November 2023-24), 63.7% of adults in England — roughly 30 million people — now meet the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week, the highest level since the survey began in 2015-16 (Sport England, Active Lives Adult Survey, April 2025).
Behind these headline figures sits a network of grassroots organisations doing the day-to-day work. Sported, the UK's leading support agency for community sport groups, works with around 3,000 community organisations that collectively reach over a million people each year (Sported Annual Report 2024-25).
The social value generated is substantial. Sport England's research, conducted with a consortium led by Sheffield Hallam University, found that community sport and physical activity generates an annual social value of over £100 billion — comprising £96.7 billion in wellbeing value and £10.5 billion in savings to health and social care (Sport England, Social Value of Sport). That translates to a return of £4.38 for every £1 spent.
With this level of investment and impact, funders rightly expect robust evidence. Spreadsheets and paper registers struggle to meet that bar, which is where dedicated software becomes essential.
What Sport-for-Change Charities Actually Need
Before comparing platforms, it is worth mapping the core requirements. Sport-for-change organisations differ from general charities in several important ways.
Participant tracking and safeguarding. You need to record who is attending sessions, manage consent and emergency contacts, and flag safeguarding concerns — often for children and vulnerable adults. A case management approach ties a participant's journey together across multiple programmes.
Session and activity booking. Coaches, venues, and time slots need coordinating. A bookings system that handles recurring sessions, waiting lists and attendance registers reduces administration significantly.
Outcome measurement. Funders want to see changes in wellbeing, confidence, employability or educational engagement — not just headcounts. The Sport for Development Coalition's Open Goal framework, now adopted by more than 50 organisations, encourages shared measurement using validated questions from UK population surveys (Sport for Development Coalition). Your software needs to support pre-and-post surveys aligned with these kinds of frameworks.
Coach and volunteer management. Community sport runs on volunteers. Sport England's Active Lives data shows that 22.3% of adults — roughly 10.5 million people — give their time to support sport and physical activity (Sport England, Active Lives Adult Survey). A volunteering module that tracks hours, DBS checks, training and availability prevents gaps in session delivery.
Funder reporting. Whether you report to Sport England, the Football Foundation, the National Lottery, local authorities or trusts and foundations, you need to pull data together quickly. Impact reporting tools that aggregate outcomes and attendance into funder-ready formats save weeks of staff time each quarter.
Partner and stakeholder management. Many sport-for-change programmes involve referral partners — schools, youth offending teams, housing associations, GPs. A partner CRM keeps those relationships visible and accountable.
Platform Comparison
Five platforms appear most frequently in the UK sport-for-change sector. Here is how they compare across the needs outlined above.
| Feature | Plinth | Upshot | Views | Charitylog | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participant case management | Yes — full case management with pathways and concern levels | Basic participant profiles | Contact and attendance records | Yes — strong case management for advice and support services | Yes — via configuration or Nonprofit Cloud |
| Session bookings | Yes — bookings with recurring sessions and registers | Session logging (not participant-facing booking) | Session and attendance logging | Limited | Via AppExchange add-ons |
| Outcome measurement | Yes — configurable surveys with pre/post analysis | Core strength — validated outcome tools, sport-specific question banks | Yes — flexible surveys and outcome tracking | Outcome recording with reporting | Via configuration |
| Volunteer management | Yes — dedicated volunteering module | No | No | Volunteer tracking available | Via add-ons |
| Impact reporting | Yes — impact reporting with aggregation and export | Core strength — dashboards, benchmarking across 1,400+ organisations | Reporting dashboards with data visualisation | Reporting suite with KPIs | Highly customisable but requires development |
| Partner CRM | Yes — partner CRM | Limited | Limited | Contact management | Full CRM capabilities |
| Sector focus | Charities and nonprofits broadly | Sport-for-development and community sport specifically | Social purpose organisations, strong in sport | Advice, support and community services | Cross-sector; charity configuration available |
| Pricing model | Subscription, scaled by organisation size | Subscription, tiered | Subscription with Sported member discounts | Subscription, unlimited users on standard plan | Per-user licensing; can be expensive for larger teams |
Upshot: The Sport Specialist
Upshot deserves particular attention as the strongest specialist platform in this space. Originally built inside the Football Foundation in 2012, Upshot became a standalone social enterprise (Upshot Systems CIC) in 2021, with social purpose locked into its constitution (Football Foundation, 2021).
Upshot now supports more than 1,400 organisations across sectors and countries, including Premiership Rugby, Lord's Taverners, The Rank Foundation and YMCA Ireland. In a single year, over 315,000 sessions with 1.3 million participants across 8,000 locations have been logged on the platform (Upshot).
Its core strength is outcomes tracking. Upshot provides sport-specific question banks and validated measurement tools that let organisations demonstrate progress against social outcomes — the kind of evidence that funders in this sector increasingly require. The benchmarking feature, which lets organisations compare their results against aggregated data from across the platform, is particularly valuable for demonstrating sector-wide impact.
Where Upshot is more limited is in broader operational functionality. It does not offer participant-facing bookings, volunteer management modules, or the kind of full case management workflow that organisations running wrap-around support programmes may need.
Views: Impact Measurement with Flexibility
Views is another platform with strong roots in the sport-for-change sector. It supports over 750 organisations, including StreetGames, Liverpool FC Foundation, Greenhouse Sports and more than 100 Sported members (Views / Sported).
Views offers flexible data collection — including offline capability for sessions in venues without reliable internet — and configurable surveys and outcome tracking. Its strength lies in adaptability: organisations can tailor fields, forms and terminology to suit their specific reporting needs.
Like Upshot, Views focuses primarily on data collection and impact measurement rather than broader operational management such as bookings or volunteer coordination.
Plinth: Broader Operational Coverage
Plinth takes a different approach by combining outcomes tracking with the operational tools that sport-for-change charities need to run day-to-day.
Case management provides a longitudinal view of each participant's journey, linking attendance, survey responses, notes and referrals into a single record. Bookings handles session scheduling, attendance registers and capacity management. Volunteering tracks coach and volunteer availability, hours, training and DBS status. Surveys support configurable pre-and-post questionnaires for outcome measurement. Impact reporting aggregates this data into funder-ready reports. And partner CRM manages relationships with referral partners, local authorities and other stakeholders.
This breadth means organisations can replace multiple disconnected tools — a spreadsheet for volunteers, a booking platform for sessions, a database for participant records — with a single system. The trade-off is that Plinth's outcome measurement tools are not as sport-specific as Upshot's validated question banks and sector benchmarking.
Charitylog and Salesforce: General-Purpose Alternatives
Charitylog is used by over 900 charities across the UK and has strong roots in advice and support services (Charitylog). Its case management and outcome reporting are solid, and its unlimited-users pricing model suits organisations with many part-time staff. However, it lacks sport-specific outcome frameworks and does not offer participant-facing booking functionality.
Salesforce is the most powerful and flexible option but also the most complex and expensive. With Nonprofit Cloud and AppExchange add-ons, it can be configured to do almost anything. In practice, most community sport charities lack the budget and technical capacity to configure and maintain Salesforce effectively. It is better suited to larger organisations with dedicated data or IT staff.
How to Choose
The right platform depends on your organisation's primary needs.
Choose Upshot or Views if your main challenge is proving outcomes to funders and you already have separate systems handling bookings, volunteer management and case tracking. Upshot is particularly strong if you want to benchmark against other sport-for-change organisations.
Choose Plinth if you need a single platform covering participant management, session bookings, volunteer coordination and impact reporting. This suits organisations that are currently juggling multiple spreadsheets and standalone tools.
Choose Charitylog if your work is closer to advice and support services, with sport as one component of a broader offering.
Choose Salesforce if you have the budget, technical capacity and long-term commitment to build and maintain a custom solution.
Whichever platform you choose, the sector is moving towards shared measurement. The Sport for Development Coalition's Open Goal framework provides a common language for outcomes, and the best platforms will support alignment with these shared standards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need sport-specific software, or will a general charity platform work?
It depends on your reporting requirements. If your funders require sport-specific outcome measures and you want to benchmark against the wider sector, a specialist like Upshot is valuable. If your needs span case management, bookings and volunteer coordination alongside outcomes, a broader platform like Plinth may be more practical.
How do these platforms handle safeguarding?
All platforms listed offer role-based access controls and secure data storage. Plinth's case management includes concern-level flagging and case worker assignment, which supports safeguarding workflows. Always check that any platform you choose is UK GDPR compliant and stores data in the UK.
Can I use more than one platform together?
Yes. Some organisations use Upshot for outcomes tracking alongside a separate system for bookings or case management. The risk is data duplication and the administrative burden of maintaining two systems. Where possible, a single integrated platform reduces this overhead.
What does implementation typically look like?
For most community sport charities, expect four to eight weeks from sign-up to full adoption. This includes data migration, staff training and configuration of your specific programmes and outcome measures. Upshot, Views and Plinth all offer onboarding support. Salesforce implementations typically take longer and may require an external consultant.
How much do these platforms cost?
Pricing varies significantly. Specialist sport platforms and charity-focused tools like Plinth, Upshot, Views and Charitylog typically offer subscription pricing scaled by organisation size, often starting from a few hundred pounds per month. Salesforce uses per-user licensing which can become expensive for organisations with many part-time coaches and volunteers. Always ask for a quote based on your specific user numbers and requirements.
Recommended Next Pages
- What is Case Management? — understand the fundamentals of structured participant tracking
- What is Impact Reporting? — how to build funder-ready evidence of your outcomes
- Glossary of Case Management Terms — key definitions for teams new to case management software
Citations and Trusted Sources
- Sport England — Active Lives Adult Survey (November 2023-24), published April 2025: sportengland.org/research-and-data/data/active-lives
- Sport England — Social Value of Sport and Physical Activity: sportengland.org/news-and-inspiration/sport-and-physical-activity-generates-over-100-billion-social-value
- Sported — Annual Report 2024-25: sported.org.uk
- Football Foundation — Upshot becomes standalone social enterprise (2021): footballfoundation.org.uk/news/impact-measurement-tool-upshot-becomes-standalone-social-enterprise
- Upshot — platform overview and usage data: upshot.org.uk
- Views / Sported member offer: sported.org.uk/hub-views-member-offer
- Sport for Development Coalition — Open Goal framework: sportfordevelopmentcoalition.org/open-goal-framework
- Charitylog: charitylog.co.uk
About the Author
Compiled by the Plinth Team. Published February 2026.