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Funding for grassroots sports - part II | Pitchcare Magazine

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By Frank Fielding in Industry on 22nd Aug 2012 6:00

This article appeared in Pitchcare Magazine
Issue 43 - June / July 2012

Money2CRICKET

The Cricket Foundation

The Cricket Foundation is an independent, registered charity endorsed by the England and Wales Cricket Board. The Foundation is concentrating the majority of its efforts on Chance to Shine - the biggest ever school sport development initiative - which aims to bring the educational benefits of cricket to state schools.

Chance to Shine

Launched in 2005, with the aim being to bring competitive cricket - and its educational benefits - back to at least a third of the country's state schools, initially over a ten-year period.

Chance to Shine is delivered through individual projects working with County Cricket Boards across England and Wales. Each project provides a structured coaching and competition programme for groups of up to eight primary and secondary state schools. The group of schools is supported by professional, qualified coaches engaged by one local cricket club.

The scheme also provides equipment, facility development (including playground markings and non-turf pitches) as well as training for state school teachers and coaches. Each project is funded for a minimum period of five years and, once it has ended, they work closely with schools and clubs to help sustain the cricket activities. Its target is to reach at least two million state school children by 2015, raising ?5m annually.

If your club is recognised by its local County Cricket Board (CCB) as a 'focus club' and is Clubmark accredited, you should contact your CCB to register your interest to become involved in the programme. If you're a state school and want to benefit from the scheme, make contact with your CCB who will be able to supply you with information on how it works.

The Lord's Taverners

The Lord's Taverners is accredited by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as the official national charity for recreational cricket. The Lord's Taverners commits 50% of the funds it raises each year to provide grants in support of youth cricket. Grants are not available for the building/renovation of grounds or pavilions, bowling machines or for ground equipment, for example sight screens, mowers or rollers.

Applications will be considered from cricket clubs affiliated to a National Governing Body (i.e. ECB, Cricket Scotland, Northern Ireland Cricket Association [NICA]), individual schools or other organisations directly involved in the development of youth cricket that have a genuine need for assistance.

One of the primary areas of funding is to encourage participation in youth cricket, particularly in disadvantaged areas. They offer management and support of inner city and other youth cricket competitions and programmes, funding to re-establish cricket in state schools, grants towards non-turf pitches to increase the opportunities for young people to play and donate hundreds of cricket equipment bags to clubs and school teams across the UK.

Cricket Equipment Bags

They provide hard ball equipment bags with enough items to equip a full team (at u16, u13 and u11 levels and girls 15-18) at a cost of ?25. Soft ball kit bags are provided free of charge. A completed application form needs to be submitted to your local ECB Development Manager. Application details are available from the Lord's Taverners website.

Non-turf pitch grants

Applications can be made for grants towards the installation of non-turf pitches, practice ends and nets. Awards do not normally exceed the following levels: Non-turf match pitch - ?3,000, Non-turf practice - ?2,000, Outdoor nets - ?1,000. The scheme is now closed for 2012, but will re-open in October 2012 for 2013 applications.

BOWLS

Bowls England

Bowls England has introduced a new service to help affiliated clubs and counties to find out more information on local, regional, national and even European funding opportunities. They use a specialist computer system to generate a comprehensive report for clubs and counties outlining all of the funds they might be eligible for. Clubs and counties will then be able to contact those funding bodies to process an application. Contact Development Officer Alistair Hollison 07765 050408 for more details on this service.

Bowls England Greens Maintenance Advisory Service

While it doesn't offer any financial benefits, what it does do is offer technical assistance and advice to clubs and ground staff. This assistance is delivered through a network of regional coordinators and county representatives who, by reason of their work experience and involvement in green maintenance work, can provide a useful bank of local knowledge. Details are available on the Bowls England website.

TENNIS

Community Tennis Association

The Community Tennis Association (CTA) is established as a non-profit-making Community Interest Company, with the aim to promote affordable tennis within local communities. It specialises in supporting local authorities, local tennis clubs and tennis professionals by providing a wide range of products that are proven to rapidly increase tennis participation at a grassroots level.

The best source for tennis related funding is British Tennis and the LTA's grant finder on its website, which allows you to choose individual or club level funding across all the regions of England, Wales and Scotland.

FOOTBALL

The Football Foundation

Aside from local authority and region specific funds, the primary funder for all grassroots football is through the Football Foundation.

The Football Foundation is the UK's largest sports' charity. Funded by the Premier League, The Football Association and the Government, it directs ?30m every year into grass-roots football.

The Foundation provides grants for a number of different projects.Their Facilities scheme provides money to develop new or improve facilities for community benefit. These include changing rooms or clubhouses, grass or artificial pitches and multi-use games areas. Small grants for small facilities projects are available via the Foundation's Build the Game scheme, which aims to assess applications to this scheme much more quickly than applications for large facility grants.

Money is also available via the Grow the Game project, designed for small projects that aim to increase participation by both players and volunteers in grassroots football by supporting the costs associated with providing the new activity.

The Football Stadia Improvement Fund

The Football Stadia Improvement Fund provides money for clubs in the Football League and the National League System down to step 7 and below who want to improve their facilities.

RUGBY

RFU (Rugby Football Union)
The majority of national funds available are administered through the RFU via a number of schemes, either run solely by them or in conjunction with one of its private sector partners. Essentially, funding falls into two categories: revenue support and capital support. Revenue funding covers people and programme, whilst capital funding is for facilities and equipment. Whether you want to upgrade your pitch, acquire a top coach, install floodlights, get some kit for the under-14 XV or renovate the home dressing room, the RFU can help with funding stream suggestions.

RFU Grand Draw

The RFU Grand Draw is a simple and risk free way to raise funds. Each year, the Draw Society organises a pool of prizes for the draw. RFU registered clubs, schools, colleges and Referee Societies are then eligible to receive a quantity of free Grand Draw tickets, from which they keep 90% of all sale proceeds. Last year the Draw raised ?475,000.

Fundrazor Sport Membership

The RFU has joined forces with Fundrazor.com to launch a new annual membership scheme that provides clubs with ways to raise development money.

Fundrazor has teamed up with leading entertainment partners and venues across the UK to supply its members with cut-price ticket offers. The tickets you buy can all be sold on to family and friends for the full price and all the money you raise you keep.

The Rugby Football Foundation

The purpose of the Rugby Football Foundation is to invest in community rugby facilities via the Community Rugby Capital Fund (CRCF). The overall aim of the scheme is to finance capital projects that improve facilities that contribute to the recruitment and retention of community rugby players.

All clubs at levels 5 and below in the English Clubs Rugby Union Championship (i.e. the leagues) are eligible to apply to the CRCF fund.

There are two different elements of the scheme. First, the Ground Match grant scheme, which provides easy-to-access grant funding - a maximum of ?5,000 and a minimum of ?1,500. Grants will be available on the basis of matching clubs' own funds (internally or externally generated) on a 50:50 basis.

Secondly is RFF's Helping Hand Grant, which allows clubs to apply for a small grant of between ?500 - ?1,500 for eligible Capital Projects (new rugby posts, redecorating the changing rooms and so on) with the club matching the grant on a pound for pound basis.

The Helping Hand Grant is viewed as an extension of the Ground Match Grant scheme with the maximum amount of funding that a club can apply for in a 24-month period set at ?5,000. However a club can make a number of applications within that time period up to the limit of ?5,000.

Third is an interest-free loan scheme, whereby a maximum loan of ?100,000 is available. Clubs at level 4 and below are eligible to apply for the interest free loan, with a maximum loan period of 15 years.

Some very useful information is available on the RFU website under its Managing Rugby section.

LACROSSE

English Lacrosse

A cash award of up to ?5,000 is available to accredited clubs, universities and community organisations to support the following priorities: increase in adult participation (aged 16+); increase the amount of new clubs or club sections; increase in the amount of trained coaches, officials and volunteers; increase in the amount of junior participation (under 16).

Examples of eligible expenditure include: training for volunteer coaches and officials; equipment; salary costs of professional staff; and paid coaching time.

Minor Grants Programme

The programme offers grants of between ?500 and ?2,000, and aims to help community groups or clubs to increase the amount of adult and junior participants,increase the amount of new clubs, club sections and teams and increase the amount of trained coaches, officials and volunteers.

Details of the Programme are available on the English Lacrosse website.

CROQUET

Croquet Association

Help and support can be sought through the development committee, contactable through your local development officer, who can often assist with advice on how to obtain grants for development projects. Clubs can apply to the CA directly for development funds, but an award will not be made for more than half of the project costs. The committee, in common with other grant awarding bodies, will also expect the application to show evidence of seeking funding elsewhere. Some may only make awards on a matching basis, so most clubs will have to look for a source of funding from several bodies.

The CA advise those seeking funds to apply first through some of the UK's larger charitable organisations that have already been mentioned in part 1. It's worth checking out the CA website which has a useful link on how to obtain lottery grants.

OTHERS

SportsAid

SportsAid is the charity for sports people, helping the next generation of British sportsmen and women to succeed. By raising funding through commercial partnerships, events, donations and other sources it supports emerging talented athletes with individual cash awards.

Young sportsmen and women may be nominated to SportsAid by their sport's governing body if they are aged 12-18 (or above for disability disciplines), a member of a regional Academy with the potential to move on to national/international representation and are not part of a fully funded programme.

The average SportsAid award for successful cricketers is between ?500 -?1,000 and goes toward costs involved in training and competing at a high level such as travel, accommodation, coaching and equipment.

The Mayor of London Facility Fund

The Mayor of London Facility Fund is part of the Mayor's commitment to deliver a grass roots sporting legacy from the2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The fund will contribute to the construction or refurbishment of sports facilities across the capital, and any not for profit organisation can apply.


USEFUL INFORMATION

Websites of general interest, all of which will have links to funding information

The Cricket Foundation - www.chancetoshine.org

Croquet Association - www.croquet.org.uk

English Lacrosse - www.englishlacrosse.co.uk

Football Foundation - www.footballfoundation.org.uk

Bowls England - www.bowlsengland.com

Friends of English Bowling - www.friendsofenglishbowling.co.uk

Lawn Tennis Association - www.lta.org.uk

The Lord Taverners - www.lordtaverners.org

Rugby Football Foundation - www.rfu.com/rff

Sport Aid - www.sportsaid.org.uk

Sport England Sportsmatch - www.sportengland.org/funding/sportsmatch

Mayor of London Facility Fund - www.london.gov.uk

The following links will take you to web based groups that can help your club locate suitable avenues of funding:

? Funderfinder - www.funderfinder.org.uk works on effective working of charities and charitable purposes by voluntary and community groups through the provision of advice, education and training relating to achieving appropriate funding for charitable purposes

? Grantsnet - www.grantsnet.co.uk - a tool to find grants information

? Access Funds - www.access-funds.co.uk - aims to provide the latest funding information from Government, National Lottery, charitable trusts, and the EU, and also contains directories of funding programmes and guides to funding

? Charity Choice - www.charitychoice.co.uk - an encyclopedia of charities online

? National Government Funding - www.governmentfunding.org.uk - availability of government grants for voluntary and community organisations by be checked on this site. It gives details of possible grants from a number of Government Departments including Health; the Home Office; Education and Skills; and Transport

? Funding Information - www.fundinginformation.org - detailed news and information about new sources of funding for all those involved in raising money for not-for-profit organisations throughout the UK

? Association of Charitable Foundations - www.acf.org.uk - membership association for trusts and foundations in the UK with over 300 members ranging in size from small and local grant-makers to some of the world's largest foundations

? Sponsorship Advisory Service - www.sponsorship-advice.org.uk - advice on how to manage sponsorship relationships

? Central Council for Physical Recreation - www.ccpr.org.uk - national alliance of governing and representative bodies of sport and recreation, they run various campaigns which might benefit community clubs

Read more articles in Industry, by Frank Fielding or from August 2012.

Read more articles from Issue 43 - June / July 2012

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Source: http://www.pitchcare.com/magazine/funding-for-grassroots-sports-part-ii.html

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