PLAY Sports Coalition
PLAY Sports, which stands for Promoting Local and Youth Sports, is a unique coalition of community and national sports organizations and leaders formed to support young athletes, working families, coaches and volunteers across all 50 states, particularly those in underserved areas, through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Their mission is to ensure that the youth and local sports survive and thrive coming out of this pandemic, providing families and especially youth opportunities for physical and mental health, character and leadership development and repairing a society that needs community, connectivity and joy. Active Policy Solutions (APS) spearheaded the development of this coalition to bring the youth sports community together. APS has advanced the work of PLAYS through our leadership on the PLAYS Steering Committee and the driver of the PLAYS government affairs effort and agenda. Below is a summary of our key accomplishments to date:
Worked with the Steering Committee to create the governance and structure to operate PLAYS. Including the formation and management of four impactful PLAYS external working groups representing a cross-section of organizations and businesses aligned with youth and local sports – the Strategic Partner Group, Advisory Council, Grassroots Leadership Council, and Advocacy Working Group.
- Developed and implemented a government affairs plan to advocate for relief for the youth sports industry including:
- Creating the COVID-19 Youth Sports and Working Families Relief Act (HR 7562) which specifically outlines the kind of relief program necessary for youth sports organizations and the families that they serve. We have secured over 35 bipartisan cosponsors for the legislation thus far.
- PLAYS sent a letter with over 4,000 signatories to Congressional Leadership outlining the core relief principles the youth sports community wants to see in the next COVID-19 relief package.
- Met with over 250 Congressional Offices to ensure that our message has been heard and integrated into Congressional policy in a multitude of ways including ensuring that the relief necessary for youth sports is including in key COVID relief measure.
- Created a Take Action Center online that has housed six different advocacy campaigns/activation opportunities for PLAYS.
- To date over 5,000 individuals from the PLAYS network have generated 23,000 advocacy messages to Members of Congress which include emails, phone calls, and social media messages.
- APS has also successfully powered nearly a thousand individual constituent activations through personalized email campaigns and messages to PLAYS members in key Congressional districts and states where we needed specific policymaker support.
- With the Steering Committee, APS successfully designed and implemented two signature activation opportunities for PLAYS to advance our legislative agenda including:
- Day for PLAY in July: We challenged our network to use the day to make calls to their elected officials to advocate for sponsorship for the Youth Sports Relief Act.
- Youth Sports Week in July: PLAYS supported the National Council of Youth Sports in promoting the importance of youth sports through social media campaigns and videos created by PLAYS members and advocating through Take Action Platform and social media tools to increase sponsorship for our legislation.
- Co-created and participated in PLAYS virtual meetings and town halls to inform and connect with our network to create a collective and unified voice for youth sports relief.
- Secured special guest Congressman Max Rose (D-NY) to brief the network on the Youth Sports Relief Act.