Collective Conversations: Sometimes the next step is to get sharper, not bigger

Some of the most useful conversations are the ones where there is already a strong idea in the room, but it hasn’t quite been shaped into something people can act on yet. 

That was the case in our Impact Hour with SportsAid. 

Jenny and I had a really open conversation with the team about the support available to talented young female athletes, particularly at the point in the pathway where SportsAid operates. What came through quickly was that there is a real gap. 

At the top of the pathway, athletes can access much more structured support through organisations like UK Sport and UKSI. Earlier on, though, provision can be much more inconsistent. Some athletes are well supported. Others are navigating without even basic guidance around things like mental wellbeing, body literacy or female-specific health. 

SportsAid’s own survey data adds weight to that picture, with female athletes reporting higher levels of anxiety, body image concerns and mental health challenges. There was a clear sense in the conversation that earlier intervention could make a real difference. 

One of the most interesting parts of the session was the conversation about parents and caregivers. 

At the moment, so much of the responsibility for navigating female health still sits with the athlete herself. But the examples SportsAid shared, including the response to a breast health webinar, suggested that parents and caregivers are actively looking for guidance too. They want to understand more. They want to know how to support the young person in front of them. And there doesn’t appear to be anyone consistently serving that audience in a structured way. 

That felt like an important clue. 

SportsAid also has something genuinely distinctive: access to a large and engaged cohort of talented young athletes across multiple sports. That means it has the ability to look across the system rather than relying on individual governing bodies to solve these issues separately. 

The opportunity is clearly there. But what the conversation helped surface was that the next step probably isn’t to rush into building a programme. The idea is strong. The intent is strong. The need appears to be there. But the proposition is still broad. 

“We want to support female athletes” is important, but it isn’t yet specific enough for a funder or partner to understand exactly what they are being asked to back. The stronger version is much clearer: this is the problem, this is who is experiencing it, this is what the evidence tells us, and this is what we are going to do about it. 

That became the main reflection from the session. 

Before designing the solution, listen more closely to the people it is supposed to serve. 

SportsAid already has access to the athletes. That is a huge strength. A focused piece of co-design with a defined group of current female athletes could go much deeper than another survey and help uncover what they are actually navigating day to day, where they feel unsupported and what they wish the people around them understood better. 

From there, the opportunity is to get much more specific. 

Female athlete health is huge. Trying to solve all of it at once risks creating something that is well-intentioned but too broad to land properly. 

The stronger route might be to focus on one clear problem. That could be helping parents and caregivers better understand and support female athletes. It could be earlier education around body literacy and wellbeing. It could be addressing the gap between what NGBs provide and what athletes say they actually need. 

The point isn’t to decide that from the outside. 

The point is to let the insight tell you where the need is strongest. 

What we also liked was the potential for whatever comes next to stay simple. 

It doesn’t necessarily need to become a huge, complex programme. A practical toolkit or framework for parents and caregivers, simple guidance organised by age or stage, or digital content that can live within existing channels could all have real value. Something useful, accessible and able to travel beyond one sport or one part of the pathway. 

There is also no reason SportsAid needs to deliver every part itself. 

The organisation’s strengths are its access, its relationships with athletes and its ability to coordinate across sport. Bringing in specialist expertise around areas like female health, nutrition or wellbeing could create something much stronger while allowing SportsAid to focus on what it already does well. 

And then comes the funding conversation. 

There is clearly potential for both brand and philanthropic investment, but the order matters. Going to market too early can make a good idea feel less developed than it really is. A clearer insight-led narrative, a tightly defined audience and problem, a simple output, and some early proof points will make those conversations much stronger. We came away from the session feeling there is something really valuable here. Not because the answer has already been found, but because SportsAid is in a position to ask the right questions and hear directly from the young women experiencing this part of the pathway. 

Sometimes progress means moving quickly. 

Sometimes it means resisting the urge to launch, listening properly, and getting much sharper about the problem you are actually trying to solve. 

For this one, that feels like the opportunity. 

Anna @SportAid said “As a charity working to break down barriers in sport, we’re passionate about creating change and naturally want to take action to see that change happen as quickly as possible. But sometimes, the most valuable thing we can do is actually pause and reflect. This conversation was a powerful reminder of the importance of taking stock, listening and being prepared to challenge our thinking. When you’re close to a problem, it can be difficult to see it from a different perspective, so having experts look in from the outside was incredibly valuable. It’s helped us sharpen our thinking about where we can make a greatest difference and given us more clarity about what the next steps should be.”

Nicky Affleck & Jenny Mitton 

Affleck & Co.