Last week, Boston became the 10th city to endorse the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports when Mayor Michele Wu signed the Project Play-developed statement at a public event and announced $300,000 in grants to support 55 community-based organizations. In adopting it, the mayor affirmed that “the City’s approach to youth sports will center the needs of youth, invest in play and qualified coaches, and commit to safe, healthy sports environments for all youth.”
The Aspen Institute recognizes Boston for its leadership and encourages other cities to take note of the experiment unfolding there – an example of how a municipality can unlock opportunities for youth through sports. Here, we explore one key innovation: a youth sports directory.
No matter what region, county or city the Aspen Institute’s Project Play community team works in, we hear a similar question from parents: how do I find the right sports provider for my family and child? The U.S. youth sports system is programs rich and systems poor, often leaving connections up to word of mouth or random advertisements.
So many quality youth sports providers operate in silos, often through no fault of their own. They want better connections to families to deliver sports experience that best fit a child.
Project Play views the creation of local online youth sports directory as a valuable goal for many communities to build depending on resources and needs. A great example is the City of Boston, which launched the Boston Youth Sports Directory and Boston Sports Facilities Map in 2024 to help families locate nearby facilities and organizations.
More than 300 organizations of all sizes – both for-profits and nonprofits – are in the Boston Youth Sports Directory, accounting for an estimated 60% of providers in or near the city limits. Families can search for the sports organizations that make sense to them, using filters by sport, age, neighborhood, season, gender, competitive level of the activity, language and cost. Schools are not included in the public-facing database because the city realized the information was incomplete and leaders wanted the user experience to be something any family could theoretically register for, unlike school sports that often require tryouts.
The user experience of the directory is easy – much simpler than most government platforms. That’s vital. Boston leaders found that it’s imperative to have people who care about the digital experience by having at least one person who’s a product manager.
Clicking on organization names reveals additional information about the entities. Do they conduct safety training for coaches? Do they offer transportation support? Do they carry insurance? Do they provide equipment for athletes? Do they conduct background checks on coaches? Do they make accommodations for differently abled youth? Organizations can also describe on their page who they are, their costs, registration timeline and process, extra enrichment opportunities provided (such as academic tutoring), and who to contact.
Not only can the directory help families, it helps the city become more focused on the community’s needs and communicating support. Connecting multiple uses to the data product and without having to frequently update it was how Boston’s government agencies bought into the effort. In February 2024, the Boston mayor’s office hired Tyrik Wilson as its first youth sports initiative manager within the city’s Let’s Play Boston initiative. The city uses the directory to share grant information, events and coaching development, and evaluate how government and potential funders can help.
While Boston’s efforts with the online directory are far from a finished product, here are some initial learnings shared by Wilson and Gideon Emmanuel, who led the technology efforts to build the platform.
Why Boston created the directory
Responsibilities for youth sports in the city government used to be spread out in many different departments. Individual staffers filled an occasional role or project. The city realized issues fell through the cracks and government needed a centralized employee to focus on issues and provide resources. Creating the directory helped families identify options and better understand problems in youth sports to find solutions.
The youth sports initiative manager position works in the Human Services Cabinet, which is charged with providing equitable access to high-quality services and resources. The largest agency within Human Services is Boston Centers for Youth and Families, which manages more than 30 facilities, including community centers and pools.
How the city uses the directory
In the past, problems within the youth sports landscape were identified through consistent feedback in focus groups. Now there is data through the directory that helps Wilson assess problems or make connections. In every sports provider’s profile, they have specified a range of needs from a city survey. This helps focus conversations. When Wilson speaks to potential funders or nonprofits, the results from the data help him filter out which provider has certain needs to match a potential investment. It’s a one-stop shop to know where to focus support.
How sports providers’ information gets collected
Boston has a survey for youth sports providers to submit their information on the city website. Occasionally, Wilson will manually enter providers into the system if he talks to someone who makes him aware of a program. He also makes calls to programs that aren’t in the database who are a past grantee or worked on a previous project with the city. Many smaller programs in Boston likely have not been captured in the directory, which is hosted on a platform called Airtable and that Wilson finds easy to use.
Challenges with a directory
Alignment with city government departments and sports providers can be challenging. Getting the data from city government employees is a process since they have many other tasks. Sometimes duplicative efforts occur when government works in silos. Trying to get various departments aligned on one effort is hard. Wilson meets directly with city department heads for quarterly meetings about youth sports.
It’s also challenging to get sports programs on the same page given how many exist. And there can be distrust and hard feelings of government, especially among those organizations who don’t receive grants despite applying. Wilson hopes the city can conduct more grant educational workshops, so providers understand the process. The city recently convened a gathering of youth sports providers to solicit feedback on how to help them moving forward, such as coach training development.
How to market the directory
So far, Boston is largely doing this through emails and social media. The city plans to create a newsletter with updates that includes mentions of the sources. The city just created Let’s Play Boston on Instagram (the initiative’s main social media channel). One benefit of the directory is the contact information allows the city to send mass emails to every provider who registered, so additional resources can be shared with them. The directory is not used much publicly yet with around 100-300 interactions per month. Officials think it will grow over many years through word of mouth, but because the directory has multiple uses, the city viewed this becoming a public resource as an added benefit.
Long-term goals of Let’s Play Boston
One major objective of the city is to find more funding partners and sponsors to help with programming. The city wants to create a better pipeline to support kids in sports – from the youngest levels to high school, from high school to college, and from college to the pros. This effort includes workshops with younger athletes on mental health, mindfulness, nutrition and financial literacy, and a heavy focus on expanding sports opportunities for girls through mentorship programs with local colleges.
Jon Solomon (jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org) is Community Impact Director for the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, the signature initiative of which is Project Play. Discover more emerging, community-led solutions in our 14 local State of Play reports here.
Additionally, learn about five ways that city and county governments can shape access to and the quality of youth programs on our two-page tipsheet.