Overview of CSI spend on sports development 2025

[CASE STUDY] Beyond the scoreboard: valuing impact in sports development 

In the field of sport for development, demonstrating tangible impact is no longer a secondary consideration but a primary demand from funders, policymakers and communities.  

However, while tracking wins and losses can be straightforward, the true social dividends of sports development – improved educational outcomes, enhanced community leadership and greater social cohesion – are far more complex to quantify. These outcomes are deeply rooted in South Africa’s unique socio-historical context, where sport serves as both a source of national pride and a means of addressing deep-seated inequalities.  

Standardised, purely quantitative monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks often fail to capture these critical nuances, necessitating a more adaptive approach.

1. Cricket South Africa: Building a developmental culture  

Cricket has a contested history in South Africa. Although it is a popular sport, it is often under scrutiny for how well it reflects the country’s demographics. Reporting systems must track operational indicators while creating space for developmental learning.  

Cricket South Africa (CSA) is the national governing body and custodian of all cricket in South Africa, with a mandate that extends to all forms of the sport, not just professional leagues and national teams. CSA tracks a wide range of indicators aligned to strategic goals that include the growth of the women’s game, inclusive access at the grassroots level and greater diversity in coaching and leadership.  

Data is collected across multiple levels of the game and reviewed alongside qualitative insights from affiliates, programme staff and athletes. The combination of formal reporting and reflective engagement enables a deeper understanding of patterns, gaps and developmental shifts that may not be visible through technical metrics alone.  

These include transformation – demographic targets alone do not reflect the lived experiences of players, coaches, or administrators – and gender equity, with CSA measuring whether women’s teams have access to the same support structures, including physiotherapists, psychologists and facilities, as their male counterparts.  

The organisation is investing in tools that allow its 15 affiliates to upload data and share learnings more easily. They are encouraged to include qualitative content, such as testimonials, photos and videos, to enrich the reporting process.  

Peer learning has become a feature of CSA’s M&E approach, with high-performing affiliates invited to share their methods with others. This helps to build a developmental culture rather than one based purely on oversight and enables CSA to engage with the impact of its work in ways that go beyond conventional metrics. 

These efforts are reinforced through CSA’s commitment to integrated reporting. As one of the few sporting bodies in South Africa that publishes an annual integrated report, CSA has adopted a model of accountability that links operational performance with broader purpose. This strengthens stakeholder confidence and provides a more holistic picture of how value is created, sustained and shared across the cricket ecosystem. 

CSA demonstrates how a national body can integrate robust quantitative reporting with rich qualitative feedback, embedding transformation into governance, strategy and stakeholder learning. 

2. The Bambisanani Partnership: Individual and community development  

In contrast, the Bambisanani Partnership employs a more qualitative, context-specific M&E approach. Originally a collaboration between St. Mary’s School in Menston, UK, and Mnyakanya High School in rural KwaZulu-Natal, the Bambisanani Partnership has expanded to involve more than 50 educational institutions, ranging from primary schools to universities, in both countries. M&E has been an important factor in this 20-year growth.  

The Bambisanani Partnership focuses on deep, long-term impact through sports leadership and education; its goals are centred on individual and community development rather than national performance metrics. The organisation’s M&E framework prioritises understanding the process and experience of its participants.  

It uses methods such as longitudinal case studies to follow individual students over several years to document changes in their confidence, leadership skills and academic aspirations. It also relies on participant observation and journals, which gather rich, qualitative data on the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange and personal growth. Finally, community feedback is a vital part of the process – teachers, parents and community leaders provide feedback so the programme’s broader social impact and relevance can be assessed.  

This approach captures the nuanced, transformative power of sport on a human level, providing powerful narratives and deep insights that quantitative data alone cannot. The Bambisanani Partnership exemplifies how sport-as-education can build deep, long-term personal and community transformation through contextual, qualitative evaluation – centred on lived experience, relationships and cross-border partnership. 

Adaptive M&E in sport  

Sports M&E needs to be adaptive, participatory and process-oriented, not just counting attendance or wins. In addition, narrative and qualitative insights matter, with testimonials, peer learning sessions and community feedback panels yielding insights that other metrics may miss, says David Geldart, founder and chairman of Bambisanani.  

Learning systems should feed back into programming rapidly and reporting should inform strategy, rather than waiting for annual cycles. Finally, equity and inclusion should be embedded into M&E frameworks to help sports bodies address transformation holistically.