Change the Game (CTG) is a coalition of nine Boston-area sports-based youth development (SBYD) nonprofit organizations working together to improve outcomes for young people across the city.

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We believe that sport is more than recreation. When designed intentionally, youth sports programs can build confidence, leadership, resilience, and opportunity. CTG exists to strengthen the quality, consistency, and collective impact of sports-based youth development in Boston.

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What We Do

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Change the Game Coalition brings together Boston's leading sports-based youth development (SBYD) organizations to strengthen the quality, visibility, and reach of this work across the city. We are not a new nonprofit, a league, or a citywide coordinator. We are a coalition — nine organizations that have chosen to work together because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our nine member organizations — All Dorchester Sports and Leadership, The BASE, Boston Scores, Community Rowing Inc., Courageous Sailing, Harlem Lacrosse, Sportsmen's Tennis and Enrichment Center, SquashBusters, and Youth Enrichment Services — collectively serve thousands of young people across Boston every year. Each organization is independent. CTG is how they connect, learn from each other, and move the field forward together.

 

What that work looks like:

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Convening around shared priorities. CTG brings member organizations together regularly for focused conversations on the challenges and opportunities that cut across all of their programs — workforce development, coaching quality, youth outcomes, and more. These aren't check-ins. They're working sessions that produce real decisions and shared direction.

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Developing the SBYD workforce. Coaches and program staff are the heart of this work. CTG hosts Coach Development Labs that bring coaches from across the coalition into one room to share practice, build skills, and learn from each other. We also support program directors through a peer leadership cohort.

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Defining the pillars of SBYD practice. CTG is developing a shared framework that articulates what sports-based youth development actually is — what distinguishes it from youth sports broadly, what strong practice looks like across different sports and program models, and what it means to deliver SBYD with intention and quality. This framework will be a public resource, available to the broader Boston youth sports community and beyond.

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Communicating what SBYD is and why it matters. CTG serves as a public voice for Boston's SBYD ecosystem — helping funders, city partners, schools, and community organizations understand the value of this work, the strength of the organizations doing it, and what it takes to do it well.

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Building infrastructure for the long term. CTG is becoming a standing platform — with governance, a fiscal agent, clear membership, and the backbone capacity to sustain this work across grant cycles and leadership transitions. The goal is not just a stronger coalition, but a stronger SBYD field in Boston, with best practices that can inform how this work grows and spreads citywide and beyond.