Participation in sports and fitness activities as a child is a positive, character-building experience with benefits that extend into adulthood. Sadly, it’s not something that all children have access to. For many underprivileged children, especially in urban environments, organized sports are not always accessible.

According to the nonprofit organization Good Sports, this lack of access is an even bigger problem than many people think. Research shows that urban youth are three times less likely to participate in sports and fitness programs than their suburban peers. Kids who don’t play sports are twice as likely to drop out of school or take drugs, and are more likely to become teen parents. Meanwhile, childhood obesity rates continue to grow.

NetSuite.org is doing what it can to help. As the corporate citizenship arm of the company, our mission is to help charities and social enterprises around the world spend less time and money on their back-end financial systems and more time on their mission. Through our software donations, discounts and our pro bono services, we’re able to help organizations, like Good Sports, make a difference.

Good Sports, based in Quincy, Massachusetts, is focused on providing sports equipment, footwear, and apparel to disadvantaged youth nationwide. Since 2003, Good Sports (www.goodsports.org) has distributed $10 million in equipment and apparel to impact over 850,000 kids across the country. That helps youth sports organizations reduce their equipment expenses so they can minimize fees charged for youth participation and offer more programs.

A Better Focus on the Goal—Kids

As a small non-profit, Good Sports itself faces funding and resource limitations that make it necessary to operate as efficiently and productively as possible. It’s achieving that goal through its partnership with NetSuite.org.

Until 2012, Good Sports staffers struggled to manage data across a patchwork of on-premise applications, and a website that captured both individual donations and applications from organizations in need. The result was time-consuming double-entry and poor visibility into donors and equipment on hand at the group’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Quincy.

That’s changed with an implementation of NetSuite, including inventory management and the SuiteCommerce web platform. Today, Good Sports is better able to manage records and relationships with about 10,000 donors, partners, and community organizations.

Good Sports now has real-time visibility into inventory on hand, enabling it to better match goods to requests and procure needed products. It no longer loses valuable staff time to tedious data management, nor needs to deal with the time, costs and maintenance headaches of managing disparate on-premise applications.

“We’re supporting more kids and organizations and distributing more equipment than ever before, and NetSuite is one of the factors that enabled us to do that,” said Melissa Harper, Good Sports CEO. “NetSuite enables us to see the big picture by putting all our information together in one place, and that’s been very helpful.”

Good Sports is one of over 400 charities and social enterprises NetSuite.org supports with discounted and donated software subscriptions. To learn more about NetSuite’s corporate citizenship program and the organizations it supports, visit www.netsuite.org.