Case study: Pledgeball
Who are Pledgeball?
Pledgeball is a major player creating climate engagement opportunities in sports communities. The organisation encourages climate action through pledges, with a matchday mechanism that connects the action of pledging to tight-knit sports fan communities and builds a sense of community efficacy.
Pledgeball started in response to my own personal feelings around climate change. I felt real despair in the face of it, completely powerless. I started researching what I could do as an individual, and shared what I found out with my football team. The response was overwhelming. As a result of that, we started Pledgeball.”
Katie Cross, Founder of Pledgeball
Pledgeball’s roots are in grassroots sports but its reach has increased drastically. The organisation now works with 10-20 professional football clubs every season, and increasingly with other sports too, including the Lawn Tennis Association, rugby clubs, and the International Biathlon Union. Further collaborations include working with UEFA and MasterCard around the Champions League, and organising the first sustainability conference for Chief Executives of EFL clubs. Pledgeball was awarded Grassroots Organisation of the Year award at BBC Green Sports Awards in 2024.
How did we help?
Climate Outreach and Pledgeball joined up their insights in an Innovation Partnership in 2021. The partnership was built around Pledgeball’s needs at the time and included collaborative knowledge sharing, specialist M&E support from evaluation partner m2, and drafting a communications toolkit together.
What was the impact?
Connecting with expert advice helped Pledgeball gain confidence in their approach
Pledgeball has had academic insights steering their work from the beginning. Working directly with Climate Outreach’s research and engagement experts helped the organisation gain confidence and consolidate their knowledge, situating their specialist insights within the wider climate engagement evidence base.
What we really wanted was for our work to be evaluated from an expert perspective. To ensure that from an expert's perspective what we were doing worked, and find ways to improve that”
Katie Cross, Pledgeball
We have confidence from the partnership, knowing there is so much expertise out there with Climate Outreach and the wide amount of research that is already out there. Whether football fans or other communities, we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Jennifer Amann, Pledgeball
Climate Outreach and Pledgeball’s co-learning workshop recording is still used by Pledgeball as training material for new volunteers.
The innovation partnership helped Pledgeball ensure their communications advice is in line with the latest evidence
We provide the clubs with copy for online content, because when they have written it themselves, it hasn't been written in a way that would draw people in”
Katie Cross, Pledgeball
In addition to hosting the pledging platform, Pledgeball provides communications assets to the clubs. These draw from the jointly generated insights.
One of the key things that really struck out was validation first - validating the work that these communities already do, demonstrating to them the impact they already have. Including fans voices and stories from each of those communities, so that people can relate to them. Something that when I say it now seems really obvious, but we didn't do to start with, is to make sure that we avoid certain buzz words and to frame things in ways that are relevant to the local community.”
Katie Cross, Pledgeball
The toolkit is a handy resource for Pledgeball’s communications advice
Originally aimed at the Football Supporters’ Association, the collaboratively designed toolkit has taken on a new life. It has provided foundational material for Pledgeball’s communications advice and assets for partner clubs.
The resource pack we put together has been really useful to us. We've shared a lot of those resources and used them and applied them to our work. It was less useful directly to supporters groups. In hindsight, we should have made it significantly shorter. But all the content is there. We're in the process with the FSA green working group to shorten it.”
Katie Cross, Pledgeball
Collaborating with Pledgeball enriches Climate Outreach’s evidence base
Stories of communities coming together provide fascinating case studies on climate engagement. Climate Outreach and Pledgeball have continued joining up new insights, which has helped communicators across the country to learn from Pledgeball’s experience. Katie shared inspiring stories from their latest impact assessment:
One interviewee said he'd never considered his impact on climate change. Which is unusual, because the research shows that some 80% of people are concerned about climate change. He pledged to win the Champions League final tickets. He couldn't believe the impact he could have, so he told his sister about it and encouraged her to pledge.“
One person said that they'd actually shared it at work, and then they could see people in the office pledging. The fact that you have trusted messengers who are naturally sharing it with those within their sphere of influence is fantastic.”
We interviewed two venues that had done really well the previous season. Nothing had been asked from them in terms of addressing operational things within the venue. They'd simply been asked to advertise the Pledgeball League to their members, which they'd done. But as a result of that, they then decided to write their own sustainability strategies, and look at installing LED lighting, and one of them came up with this amazing idea about how to repressurize tennis balls to increase their lifecycle. It was just nice to hear the ripple effect.”
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