Across many of the sport organisations I’ve worked with, staff and resources promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are usually siloed within a “Participation”, “Community” or “Development” team. As a result, the sphere of influence of these staff to achieve whole-of-sport change is limited.

In order to properly realise the diversity that organisations parade about in their strategic plans and mission statements, inclusion can’t just be a participation budget line item.

Inclusion is a high performance line item.

The San Antonio Spurs are a well-documented example of the success that cultural and gender diversity can bring on and off-court. In Australia you can look at the recent examples of Peter Bol, Patty Mills, Madison de Rozario, and the fact that women have yielded the majority of Australian gold medals at each of the most recent Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games.

It is arguably a waste of resources to invest in greater inclusion at the grassroots level, if similar investment is not made ensuring the pathways above are suitably safe and embracing of diversity.

Inclusion is a marketing line item.

Marketing is all about identifying new audiences, engaging communities, developing brand equity, and guiding the behaviours within your sport system to support strategic outcomes (participation, revenue etc.). So marketing is fundamentally inclusion, gift-wrapped with a sexier title.

Inclusion needs to sit at the forefront of marketing strategies (and therefore, budgets) because when people feel belonging, they invite their whole community along for the ride.

Inclusion is a commercial line item.

A more inclusive sport organisation makes procuring funds through sponsors and grants much easier. Corporations are (gradually) realising that prioritising investment in sports who champion equity and diversity across their leagues, is a dual win for their social responsibility and financial bottom-line.

At last month’s IWG 8th World Conference for Women and Sport, Angela Ruggiero from the Sports Innovation Lab highlighted the evolution of the modern sports fan towards being more values-based, and displaying strong loyalty towards brands who promote DEI.

In Australian sport this year there are numerous examples of sporting bodies being held to a higher account on their commercial partners’ social impact. With greater DEI within sporting bodies, sponsorship prospects can be more effectively vetted, managed and leveraged.

Inclusion is a competition and events line item.

Inclusion needs to be factored into budgets for competitions and events - otherwise the efforts throughout the organisation will be squashed by inadequate facilities and services when it matters most.

Having a large and diverse sport ecosystem also makes the tendering and hosting processes for major events more effective. If you’ve attended any World Cup event this year (they’ve been hard to miss - Australia and New Zealand alone have hosted UCI, ICC, FIBA & World Rugby championships this year), you will have seen how multi-culturalism comes out in full flight and amplifies the economic impact of an event.

As if that isn’t enough of a carrot, current and prospective Olympic sports need to align their systems to:

• The recently-gained equality in medal distribution across genders; and

• The philosophies guiding which sports are being added (and removed from) from the Olympic programme.

Finally, in my experience, community cultural groups are super-important to the volunteer workforce for major events. So if your organisation is attuned to the needs of local cultural and religious groups, you will find many hands make light work on event day!

Inclusion is a legal line item.

This one is obvious - investing in DEI activities reduces an organisation’s risk and costs of potential litigation around discrimination.

Summing up: Inclusion is a whole-business line item.

It is a whole-business responsibility, so everyone needs to bring something to the party. Ideally organisations have a dedicated People & Culture management resource reporting directly to the CEO, and all DEI activities are embedded and coordinated centrally. Alas, examples like this are still too rare within the industry.

Pause and check: does your organisation have a budget for becoming more inclusive?

It’s surprisingly common for organisations of all sizes to have strategic plans pushing ‘inclusion’ and marketing themselves as inclusive, despite having no budget assigned to maintaining (or establishing) this competitive advantage through DEI education and advocacy programs.

“But we don’t have the money for it”

I’ve come across this a few times, and here’s what I recommend - ask for an “Inclusion” line item to be added into next year’s budget with $0 next to it. You’ll be sowing the seeds for your successor (or future you) to achieve it, because you’re guaranteeing that it is on the financial agenda each year.

And with all of the growth opportunities touched upon above, organisations can’t afford not to review their budgets here! But to the CFOs out there - please share the love across the whole organisation.