PLAYBuilder Q&A with Moresports
Moresports creates and facilitates recreational programs that promote sport and leadership development. Supported by a network of community partners, this B.C. organization ensures positive engagement and experiences among youth.
Moresports comprises 12 hubs across Vancouver and Coquitlam. In Vancouver, hubs are supported by partnerships between the Vancouver School Board and Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, along with other community-based organizations. In Coquitlam the hubs are supported by a similar partnership between the Coquitlam School District 43 and Coquitlam Recreation, Parks and Culture, and other community based organizations. These 12 hubs cover 29 neighbourhoods in Vancouver and Coquitlam and create opportunities that are wanted and needed in their respective neighbourhoods.
Sport for Life reached out to see how their experiences with PLAYBuilder are going so far.
Sport for Life: What made you look for a solution like PLAYBuilder?
Moresports: Our organization is quite complex and we run in 12 different neighbourhood hubs that provide sport and leadership programming for children and youth in Vancouver and the Tri-Cities. Within each hub, our staff had a plethora of resources (lesson plans, training resources, drills, etc.) within their own departments. Organizationally, we wanted a platform to share program resources amongst staff, volunteers in the different hubs, and ultimately a way to centralize our resources to create better access points and resource sharing processes.
Additionally, annually we engage over 300 volunteer coaches and we were looking for a better and more efficient way to share lesson plans and activities with our volunteers.
Sport for Life: Why did you choose PLAYBuilder?
Moresports: PLAYBuilder offered a perfect solution to help us create a centralized database platform to share resources to staff and volunteers, while also allowing staff to create unique profiles to cater to hub-specific programming. It was great to have the option to subscribe to other collection content packs (e.g. Sport for Life packs) that offered our coaches and volunteers more resources. We appreciated the intentionality that the lesson plan builder allowed for, and saw it as a great platform for our coaches to develop future resources.
The PLAYBuilder team was very responsive to our organizational needs and concerns and was always open to our feedback on how we could optimize use of the platform. It’s been a wonderful process working with them overall.
Sport for Life: Did you intend to share full access to your members? If not, what were the reservations or limitations in sharing access to your members?
Moresports: Yes, we intended to share full access to our members, which were our staff. We saw PLAYBuilder as a centralized platform that would open up access and resources. For future considerations that we have not rolled out yet, we were planning to give limited access to our volunteers. The volunteer accounts would have been specially tailored for them by our staff members and curated specifically for program needs that the volunteers would be leading.
Sport for Life: What organizational processes does this app enhance? How much does it reduce the cost and time to complete these particular processes?
Moresports: PLAYBuilder was a great resource database for all our lesson plans and activities. It helped us curate and organize our resources (lesson plans and activities) in an intentional manner that enabled better accessibility for staff and volunteers. Creating and searching for lesson plans for programs has been expedited with PLAYBuilder once we had all the content packs, lesson plans and accounts set up properly.
There was a lot of frontloading time of setting up the PLAYBuilder accounts, but once it was set-up for the specific needs of each hub, it was easy for staff to use. Onboarding new staff and volunteers was easier as we now had a platform that was configured for hub-specific resources that they could access right away and use immediately.
Sport for Life: Would you recommend PLAYBuilder to your peers?
Moresports: Yes, I would recommend this platform to my peers. The app is a great way to share resources amongst members in an organization in an intentional and organized structure. The content pack subscriptions from Sport for Life are a great resource to be able to tap into. Lastly, the PLAYBuilder team truly collaborates with Sport for Life, who is always supportive and engaging with our feedback.
Sport for Life: How has the pandemic affected your programming, and has our software been helpful in mobilizing innovation?
Moresports: The pandemic has significantly affected our programs as we had to completely shut down all of our operations from late March to September. With the uncertainty of facility access for programs and funding due to the pandemic, it has been a time of adjustment and tempered planning.
We have been slowly transitioning back to work since late September to figure out the new realities in light of COVID-19, and have hopes to apply for COVID relief funds that we can use to further engage in participants, families and staff again to offer much needed sport and physical literacy programs to communities. We hope to utilize the PLAYBuilder app to engage our volunteers, previous participants and families from an online platform, but are looking to secure grant funding to operationalize this.
