About Us

Make Sport Fun is a social enterprise which helps councils, CSPs and charities engage inactive people and get them into your activities.

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Industry knowledge

We know the physical activity industry inside out, so you don’t have to worry about getting us up to speed.

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Specialists in engaging hard-to-reach groups

We focus only on engaging hard-to-reach groups in sport and activity including women and girls, over 65s and lower socio-economic groups.

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Reliable and easy to work with

We’re PRINCE 2 project management qualified. So you’ll know that everything will be delivered on budget, on time and you’ll be kept updated.

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Confusion simplified

We cut through jargon and simplify projects to what really matters. We’ll help you get management on board, and save you time and headaches.

Our Mission

It’s our mission to engage inactive people and get them into your activities. You have a huge number of roles you fill – and you don’t have a marketing background. That’s why we’re here – to support you with marketing your activities so you can engage hard-to-reach inactive people.

Our founder John Ainsworth has worked on this for over 10 years – starting as Campaigns Manager at Sport England in 2005. He recognised that councils, CSPs and charities needed more support with marketing their activities in order to engage inactive people. So in January 2008 he set up Make Sport Fun to help.

John’s story

When I was at secondary school I hated sport.

I went to a private school and we had to play sport five times a week – rugby, hockey or cricket – and I couldn’t stand it. In fact – for a whole term I hid in a cupboard in the music department with my friend Tim McLeish just so the sports teacher wouldn’t know we existed.

Then Tim joined the cross country team, and started raving to me about it. I thought I’d give it a go. It turns out I didn’t hate sport at all – I just hated team sports. Since then I’ve run the Sheffield Marathon, Great North Run, Clacton triathlon, London triathlon, got a blue belt in Kickboxing and taken part in numerous other sports – all individual sports.

I’ve also been on a mission to help people who are inactive to find something they love to do, and get all the benefits of activity.

John Ainsworth

Campaigns Director

When John was young he hated getting active, until one day he found that he just didn’t enjoy playing team sports. Since then he’s been on a mission to help other people have fun getting active.

He enjoys kickboxing, hiking and lifting weights.

Rita Ainsworth

Campaigns Manager

Rita is a certified customer acquisition specialist. She’s incredibly organised, and keeps everything running smoothly. She’s worked at Make Sport Fun for 6 years on projects for councils, charities, NGBs, NHS and private fitness clients.

She’s a big fan of hiking, gardening and good food.

Rachael Ridley

Behaviour Change Specialist

Rachael’s a fully qualified and experienced marketer with a marketing degree and over 10 years business experience. She’s also trained in Motivational Interviewing at Sheffield Hallam University.

She conducts all our phone-based behaviour change support and supports over 80% of people she talks with to become more active

Josip Belina

Campaigns Officer

Josip is responsible for all the day-to-day work on our campaigns. He sets up Facebook Ads, email campaigns, website pages and much more.

Harley

Office Dog

Harley is our office dog. He helps keep us active even on the days we don’t want to leave the house. He’s 13 now, so he’s pretty old, but he’s still happy as long as he gets enough food for two dogs. Now if you hear a bark in the background when you’re on the phone to us, you’ll know who’s saying hello.