Kelly Davies realised she could use young people to help clubs build capacity and implement strategies which they couldn’t necessarily invest in because they didn’t have the finances. Kelly Davies was born to football. Her father, who ran a food packaging business, played for Rhyl and she was a season ticket holder at Liverpool from the age of six.
By Chris Kelsey
Ms Davies, who was born in Abergele, Conwy in 1984, used to play football with her father in the back garden. But for a young girl growing up in North Wales in the 1990s there were not many opportunities to play football.
“I ended up playing five a side, then someone in the leisure centre told my Dad there were Welsh trials and I should go because I could obviously hold my own. Within two weeks I was in with the under-14s,” she said.
She started to play more regularly because she was recognised as something of a talent.
“I went to Bangor City football club training all the time,” she said.
She got into the under-18 squad at age of 15, then had a break. The manager of the Welsh senior ladies team was the Arsenal captain. She was offered an opportunity when she reached 16 to go down to Arsenal full-time, to study in the morning and train in the afternoon.
“If I hadn’t gone to Arsenal I would have fallen by the wayside probably. It was a big move at 16 to leave home and go to London not knowing anybody,” she said.
She carried on with the arrangement at Arsenal until she was 18, becoming in turn captain of the Wales under-18 and under-19 squads, then breaking into the senior squad.
But at 18 she decided she wanted to go to university.
“I didn’t see myself as being a football coach, physiotherapist or fitness instructor. I wanted to pursue business, either in football or some other field,” she said.
“My Dad was a very successful businessman and I probably had a bit of that entrepreneurial spirit. I knew there weren’t that many women in football doing it.”
She went on a scholarship to Loughborough university to study sports science and business management.
At the same time she carried on playing football, leaving Arsenal now she was no longer living in London and playing for Liverpool instead.
It was at this time that she became interested in the community side of football.
Charlton Athletic asked her to go to South Africa. “I got involved in the community side of their programmes – gun and knife crime and community health in the morning, playing football in the afternoon. While there I saw how much the community trust was doing, a lot of things for health and education,” she said.
She went to Liverpool University to do an MBA in football industries, doing her dissertation on the viability of a commercial department for a football association.
“I looked at what commercial departments were like in football clubs at all levels,” she said.
“I came up with 10 areas, if you were effective in those areas and you implemented strategy, if you could make it financially sustainable it was worth investing in.”
After graduating she went to work for a professional sport tours company, helping Premier League clubs organise tours.
“It was great work experience but I thought, this isn’t what I necessarily want to do,” she said.
The owners of the company owned a football club. “I said to them, if you stop writing that cheque out on a Friday afternoon this football club will go bankrupt, because there were no models or strategies in place,” she said.
“They said, you do whatever you like but we’re not going to give you any money to do it.”
So she set up a football in the community scheme “with just a bag of balls and cones.” The scheme developed into a community programme and made £175,000 in the first year.
Following the success of this initial venture, Ms Davies realised that she could turn her dissertation into an educational programme.
The idea was that she could use young people to help clubs build capacity and implement strategies which they couldn’t necessarily invest in because they didn’t have the finances.
“I thought, we’ll marry the two together and at the end of it hopefully the young person can come out with 20 different career options and we can help the club to become financially stable at the same time,” she said.
She secured some initial funding and invitations from a number of football clubs to run the programme there.
“I thought because it was the first of its kind it’s going to be my home town, so I went for Colwyn Bay football club,” she said.
She was told she had to engage 20 16-18 year old ‘Neets’ (not in employment, education or training).
“We opened it up. There was no criteria, whether they were ex-offender or just out of school,” she said.
“They came for 20 weeks, three days a week. All 20 completed and 18 went into full-time jobs.”
With the programme proving successful more funding and contracts were forthcoming.
“It scaled up and our outcomes were still the same. But it wasn’t just about jobs it was about the social impact we were having on the community and the club,” she said.
“The club was becoming more financially sustainable. Soon we were running not only their educational programme but their community programme, health, things to do with older people.
“The whole club was thriving, there was money coming everyday in facility hire. Because of the increase in revenue and interest they got promoted two years running.
“We got back to back investment and back to back promotion. We did the same at Bangor, which also got promoted.”
At the end of the first year (Vi-Ability was set up in December 2010) the company won the Wales Social Enterprise Start-up of the Year award and an Inspire Wales Award 2011.
“The challenge after the first year was how to maintain it,” Ms Davies said.
“In our second year turnover tripled, we won more contracts, went from two clubs in North Wales to seven. We won a Jobs Growth Wales employment contract which brought us down to South Wales. We’re now engaged with 28 clubs and are moving into different sports.”
Vi-Ability has a turnover of £500,000 and employs five full time and three part time staff members. It has 29 young people in supported employment contracts.
It recently secured a £150,000 investment for two full-time staff to deliver projects in South Wales, Swansea and south west Wales.
“We’ve been asked by Sport Wales to look at hockey and swimming,” Ms Davies said.
“The model should work for different clubs because the principle still applies. As long as they have facilities and membership they can grow.
“Essentially it’s making sure the clubs see themselves as businesses, and making sure they’re not reliant on government funding which we know is getting tighter.”
If sports clubs do not turn themselves into viable businesses, Ms Davies points out, they risk “falling by the wayside” and then young sports people at the grassroots are not having opportunities.
“And then we wonder why we’re hitting participation rates,” she said.
“We probably have really good people but they never get any opportunity to even access that.”
Vi-Ability has already expanded beyond its original vision, Ms Davies said.
“We don’t just do education programmes now, we do supported employment, training qualifications, work placements.
“We’ve got lots of customised programmes for financial capability. If there’s a problem we’ve got a specialised training programme through sport to address it.”
And the company benefits a wide range of clients. “We’re working with economically inactive people, they’re our main beneficiaries. We’ve had lone parents, ex-offenders, homeless people,” she said.
Vi-Ability is a company limited by guarantee set up by the Wales Co-operative Centre which has supported the business with advice.
The company has already come a long way in a short time, but Ms Davies, true to her mantra of having a proper business strategy, is making plans for the future based on her sound knowledge of the marketplace.
“We need investment to scale, otherwise we’ll be at threat from competition. At the moment there’s no competition because this is a new area, but it would be naive to say that won’t happen,” Ms Davies said.
She added: “We’re in a good position, but if we’re to go to that next level we need to get some investment to get some key people to grow capacity to roll it out to other areas.”
The £150,000 investment for two full-time staff in South Wales goes some way to delivering on that growth strategy, as does Vi-Ability’s achievement in being chosen to be one of 16 enterprises from across the UK to be supported by Deloitte’s Social Innovation Pioneers programme, which offers pro-bono support over 12 months.
Ms Davies may no longer play football, but she is doing a lot to make local football clubs viable and supporting young people and communities at the same time. (
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/business/business-news/vi-ability-social-enterprise-helps-bring-5701773)
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