It’s been a tough 12 months for everyone, however in today’s blog we wanted to highlight some grants and funding options that may be available to help support your sports club through another difficult period.
At the time of writing (January 2021), the majority of indoor and outdoor sports are unable to take place. This is undoubtedly incredibly frustrating for providers, participants and organisers, and of course, has knock on effects for physical and mental health. Organisers will also be feeling financial pressures too, with lower incomes and additional expenditure to meet covid-19 safety requirements when they are allowed to resume activities.
The more positive news however is that funding are grants have become available to help sports clubs adapt, survive and hopefully thrive.
Government Support
In January, the government announced support for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses with grants up to £9,000, depending on rateable value:
- £4,000 for businesses with a rateable value of £15,000 or under
- £6,000 for businesses with a rateable value between £15,000 and £51,000
- £9,000 for businesses with a rateable value of over £51,000
These new one-off grants are in addition to existing business support, which include grants worth up to £3,000 for closed businesses, and up to £2,100 per month for impacted businesses once they reopen.
You can read more about the support made available by the government here:
https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus/business-support
Sport England funding
Sport England have also made funding available through a number of different Return to Play schemes.
The Return to Play: Small Grants fund will award between £300 to £10,000 to help community organisations provide covid-19 secure settings to enable community sport to resume later in the year. These grants can be used to ensure clubs have the correct sanitation equipment, signage, or enable them to buy additional sports equipment – for example more goals to allow smaller groups to play, additional boot wipers to allow easier social distancing or portable floodlights to enable outdoor sports to take place.
The Return to Play: Community Asset fund helps clubs and community groups adapt spaces to enable them to be used for sports and physical activities. This fund awards between £10,001 and £50,0000 to successful applicants.
The Return to Play: Active Together fund allows clubs to set up and run crowd-funding campaigns to help them through the pandemic. Successful applications have already included funding for items such as portable outdoor floodlights to allow training to resume in an outdoor environment.
Full information about the three funds above is available here:
https://www.sportengland.org/funds-and-campaigns/our-funds
Football Foundation funding
Whilst Sport England provide a lot of funding options for rugby, tennis, hockey and many other sports clubs, applications from clubs primarily focused on football are usually not included, as this role is filled by the Football Foundation.
The Football Foundation provides funding for new equipment, such as goals, portable floodlights, team kit and other pitch equipment.
More information about Football Foundation funding can be found on the link below:
https://footballfoundation.org.uk/looking-for-funding
If you’re applying for funding for one of the above schemes for new sports equipment and require a quotation to include with your application, please contact us on 01858 545789 and we’d be happy to help.