6. The Street Soccer Foundation

Company: The Street Soccer Foundation

Founder and CEO: Keith Mabbutt

Website: https://streetsoccerfoundation.org.uk/
 

 

About The Street Soccer Foundation

 

Overview
The Street Soccer Foundation was established in 2015 with a clear purpose: to harness the power of football to tackle homelessness and social exclusion across the United Kingdom.

What sets the organisation apart is its structured, partnership-led model, connecting participants to employment, education and long-term stability. Football acts as the entry point, with data-led collaboration driving sustained impact.

Today, the Foundation operates nationally, working alongside professional football clubs, major employers and technology partners to deliver measurable, life-changing outcomes at scale.

Challenges
From the outset, the Foundation faced a complex challenge: engaging individuals experiencing homelessness or instability, many of whom have limited trust in traditional systems, and supporting them into sustainable futures.

This required more than sport alone. It demanded:
• A model that builds trust and consistency
• A system that tracks individual progress over time
• A framework that can scale nationally without losing quality
• Sustainable partner integration and funding

Balancing human engagement with scalable infrastructure has been central to its approach.

Next Level
The Foundation has addressed this by creating a multi-partner ecosystem, integrating football, employers and technology partners into a single model.

Working with organisations connected to the Premier League and English Football League, and clubs including Chelsea, Crystal Palace and Leicester, programmes are embedded within communities across the UK.

This has evolved into The Big Goal, a national movement connecting corporate partners directly to participants, creating pathways into employment while aligning business engagement with measurable outcomes. Partners are active contributors, not passive sponsors.

Technology
Technology underpins delivery at scale. Through structured data systems, the organisation tracks:
• Engagement and attendance
• Progression into employment, education or training
• Programme performance across locations
• Partner contribution and impact

This creates shared intelligence, helping stakeholders understand what works and where support is needed. Technology acts as an enabler of coordination, accountability and scale.

Impact on SportsTech
The Foundation represents a new category within SportsTech, shifting focus from performance and fan engagement to measurable social impact.

By combining football, an integrated partnership model and data-led tracking, it demonstrates how technology can support systemic change. This approach is helping redefine SportsTech as a sector capable of delivering tangible social value at scale.

Today and Future Vision
The Foundation continues to expand across the UK, supporting more participants each year while strengthening its partner network.

Its focus is on scaling data infrastructure, deepening employer integration and expanding The Big Goal as a national platform for business-led social impact, creating clear pathways out of homelessness and into sustainable futures.

 

SportsTech22

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