Swansea City AFC Foundation’s 2022-2023 Impact Report has highlighted the increased influence the club’s charitable arm is having in the community; and head of Foundation Paul France hopes there is plenty more to come.

After the release of the Foundation’s first Impact Report, which covered the 2021-2022 project year, France set three key goals for the Foundation to work towards.

Those were to increase the Foundation’s health and wellbeing provisions, to further support participants’ mental health, and help to tackle anti-social behaviour during the 2022-2023 project year.

The introduction of the FIT Jacks programme, a doubling of the number of participants engaged in the Premier League Kicks targeted intervention programme, and every Foundation programme having a focus on mental health all contributed to achieving those aims.

“The impact report is a vital piece of work for us because it gives a fantastic overview of everything we’ve done over the last 12 months,” said France.

“Not only does it highlight the work that we are doing, but it demonstrates the impact that we are having within our community.

“It’s got a lot of really impactful case studies in it with participants telling their stories in their own words, highlighting their own journeys and the impact it’s having in their lives, which is crucial for us.

“It’s for us to then report back to funding partners about how we are doing with our projects and the difference that it’s making, but it’s also an important document that we can send out to any prospective partners to improve the number of organisations that we are working with.”

A significant finding from the 2022-2023 report was that the Foundation’s social value had increased by £1.1million from the previous 12-month period, further underlining its importance to our community.

“I’m hugely proud of that (social value number). It was my first full year as head of foundation here at Swansea and when I came here I wanted to make a difference. In every meeting I had with staff, I said that we need to do more and everybody has responded so well and we are doing more,” explained France.

“The turnover has increased, the social value has increased, we’ve now gone up to £17.5million, which means for every pound invested into Swansea City AFC Foundation, we deliver a return on investment of £16.60 which is fantastic. I’m so proud of that, but I still think there’s a lot more we can do.”

Since the period covered by the recently-published Impact Report, the Foundation has furthered its reach within Swansea and the surrounding area by working with more partner organisations and finding new ways to engage with people.

“We’ve done incredibly well against the goals we set ourselves, we monitor that really closely, and it’s what we report back on,” added France.

“We’ve continued to grow in the time since this report. We’ve done particularly well around health and wellbeing, because I think that’s an area where we can make a significant impact.

“With the FIT Jacks programme, we are working with the council through the Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF), and we’ve managed to grow the programme beyond the stadium to work in collaboration with the five GP cluster groups.

“We’re also taking it into businesses and that’s having a significant impact. We’ve now got around 250 people taking part in that programme across various venues and that will continue to grow.

“We held a sponsored sleep out in support of Matthew’s House, that raised £28,000 and we’ll be doing that again this year in November. 

“We held a prostate cancer screening event at the stadium, we had 250 men join us and we managed to offer that free of charge thanks to funding from Nationwide Building Society. So we’ll be looking to continue building those kinds of relationships so that we can host those types of events again, because it does make a difference.

“We know that 18 men received red letters for further investigation from the event, that could save people’s lives and that is the sort of impact we want to be making.”

The Foundation will now be looking ahead to the 2024-2025 project year, with France targeting more opportunities to work in specific areas to maximise the influence of the Foundation.

“I want us to continue that growth, I want us to continue to be a really impactful needs-led organisation, so working with local strategic partners, looking at the local need and where we can fit,” he added.

“That’s particularly the case around early intervention, health and wellbeing, tackling anti-social behaviour and youth violence and looking at where we can best utilise the power of the brand of the football club, because that’s what we do and it’s really powerful in Swansea and west Wales.”