One goal – healthier, happier, stronger communities. That is the vision that underpins a new strategy for community engagement by Watford Football Club’s official registered charity Watford FC’s Community Sports and Education Trust (the Trust), titled ‘Tactically Speaking’.
With over thirty years of experience in community engagement, built on the continued legacy of Watford FC’s early initiatives, the Trust is an award-winning organisation with a proud history of harnessing the power of football. A charity since 2004, the Trust has a proven track record for projects that deliver positive outcomes and facilities that help reach local people. In 2024, the Trust is now a team of over 60 members of full and part-time staff, with a pool of casual members of staff and volunteers, investing over £2.5 million into its communities, engaging over 15,500 people every year.
To support the creation of the strategy, the Trust commissioned Darren Lawrence Coaching and Consultation to undertake a thorough consultation with staff, trustees, patrons, volunteers, partners, Watford FC supporters, and members of the community. This included over 40 hours of consultation, 25 one-to-one interviews, five staff workshops, and 1359 survey responses.
The results presented some fantastic endorsements of the Trust, including their targeted projects such as Golden Memories and Shape up, community hubs in Cedars and Meriden, and their ongoing commitment to the legacy of Graham Taylor OBE. However, it also highlighted the need to further review and provide clarity on their current community work, as well as meet the needs of current society. Research and insights found these societal challenges to be anti-social behaviour and violence, cost of living, health inequalities, loneliness and isolation, obesity, and poor mental health.
The five-year strategy that was born out of the consultation can be found here and is driven by their new mission statement – ‘to expand the Watford FC family by providing opportunities in Hertfordshire and London, to enrich people’s lives, create special memories, and enable positive futures’.
Throughout the course of the strategy, the Trust will look to achieve the following outcomes:

• People in our communities have improved physical wellbeing.
• People in our communities have improved mental wellbeing.
• Our communities experience improved cohesion.
• People in our communities are better equipped for their future.

And will employ the following tactics to help them get there:

• Bring people and organisations together to make brighter futures for all.
• Create, manage, and deliver projects and services to achieve our organisational outcomes.
• Ensure we are a safe and sustainable charity.
• Be an insight-led and impact-driven organisation to meet the needs of our communities.
• To maintain and enhance the reach and connectivity of Watford Football Club.

The first year of the five-year strategy has now commenced and will largely focus on implementation across the organisation, including putting in place a framework for which their success against the named outcomes can be measured. The Trust are once again working collaboratively on this, this time with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
Community Director at the Trust, Rob Smith, said:

“With the help of our patrons, trustees, colleagues, volunteers, partners, beneficiaries, and supporters, we have created a Strategy built on collaboration. Actively listening to others, as well as taking on board relevant insights, were key to its creation and have meant that we can now confidently say we have a clear vision for our future and a path to get us there.
As society changes so do the needs of people. We were keen to remain agile in our approach to delivering our services, embracing different ways of engaging individuals, and tackling new challenges as well as those that sadly remain. We now look forward to putting words into action, building on a strong track record, and continuing to deliver a real positive impact in the communities we serve.”