Cash for football

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Nicola Hill explains the role of the Football Foundation and where else you can go to finance your new kit, goalposts, turf, floodlighting, stadium…

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Amateur football is in a state of disrepair, according to a recent survey by the Football Foundation – the charity set up to distribute lottery funds to grass-roots football in England. Two out of five local pitches have no proper drainage and no changing rooms.

The Register of English Football Facilities (REFF), released in January, is billed as the largest such survey in British sporting history and the foundation hopes to use the results to channel funds where they are most needed. The Football Foundation was launched in July 2000 to improve sporting facilities for parks, local leagues and schools, by providing capital and revenue support for grass-roots football. To date it has distributed £40m to more than 300 improvement projects, plus thousands of micro-awards for new team kit. It is a partnership of the Premier League, the Football Association, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and two lottery distributors, Sport England and the New Opportunities Fund. In its first year the FF received £24m in a three-way split between the FA, the Premier League and Sport England (with a little top-up from the government’s pools duty). This total doubled in 2001 when the Premier League agreed to contribute 5% of its TV rights deal with Sky – worth £20m a year. The other partners raised their contributions to create a fund of £60m, of which the FF took £52.5m, with £7.5m going to its non-charitable arm, the Football Stadia Improvement Fund (FSIF), for ground safety and improvement work for professional/non-league clubs. The lottery-funded element of this deal is roughly £10m a year from Sport England and £10m a year (up to 2004) from NOF’s PE and Sport programme. FF puts £45m a year into bricks and mortar projects, with the remainder going on community and education schemes. Even with this amount of cash, it estimates it will take at least 10 years to rectify the problems identified in the REFF survey. The foundation hit the headlines at the end of last year in the wake of the ITV Digital collapse, when it was proposed to use FF cash to help bail out threatened league clubs. The government stepped in and it was made clear that no lottery funding could be diverted for bail-outs. The Premier League and Football Association agreed not to tamper with any of the FF’s funding arrangements, deciding instead to advance £20m of their next four years’ commitment to the FSIF to help finance rescue plans. There has also been a bit of media sniper fire between the FF and the Football Association about whether the FF is getting its grants out quickly enough. The foundation is very keen to promote its existence and encourages potential applicants to call it direct if they want to check their eligibility and how the process works, rather than going via their local governing body, LEA or anyone else. 

The foundation is the main source of local football funding in England as Sport England now channels nearly all of its contribution through the charity. (Any application to Sport England which has 70% or greater football content is referred to the foundation.) FF will accept bids from local authorities, schools and colleges, football clubs, multi-sport clubs, registered charities, companies limited by guarantee, industrial and provident societies and not-for-profit organisations. There are two main programmes: 

Grass Roots: supports organisations that wish to build, develop or refurbish facilities to sustain or increase participation. Suitable projects might include changing-room improvements, pitch drainage and artificial pitch installation. Applications (max £1m) may include an element of revenue funding. Minimum 10% match funding is needed; to date the average grant awarded has been 65% of project cost. 

Community and Education Grants: designed to increase participation and volunteering by people with disabilities, black and ethnic communities, people on low incomes, women and girls. Suitable projects might include community coaching, volunteer training and study-support centres. Grants are up to £100,000 over five years, and 10% match funding is needed. The foundation is targeting about half of its NOF contribution towards school capital projects in areas in the top quartile of the government’s deprivation index, but again stresses that applications are welcome from all comers as it has plenty of cash available. 

Contacts
The Football Foundation 
Help Desk: 0800 0277766 enquiries@footballfoundation.org.uk www.footballfoundation.org.uk 
The REFF football facilities survey: www.reff.org.uk 

Sportsmatch, England
020 7233 7747 info@sportsmatch.co.uk 
www.sportsmatch.co.uk 

Awards for All
0845 600 2040; www.awardsforall.org.uK 

Sports Council for Wales 
029 2030 0500 www.sports-council-wales.co.uk 

Sportsmatch Cymru 
029 2030 0596 

SportScotland
0131 339 9000 www.sportscotland.org.uk 

Sports Council for Northern Ireland
028 9038 1222 www.sportni.org

OTHER FUNDS FOR FOOTBALL

UK-WIDE
Awards for All: Grants from £500 to £5,000. Also available in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. 

ENGLAND
Football Association: Watch out for a new scheme operating from April, England only, using £9.4m of exchequer funding to enhance community sports facilities. 

Sportsmatch: the government’s grassroots sports sponsorship scheme to encourage businesses to support local football. Sport England provides £3.5m a year from its grant-in-aid; the scheme is run in England by the Institute of Sports Sponsorship. Any local not-for-profit group, school or college may apply: you need to raise sponsorship in cash or in-kind from up to three local business sponsors and Sportsmatch will put up match-funding up to £50,000. Project emphasis for these funds is on: increased participation, new activities, links to the local community and long-term benefits. Priority groups are: women and girls, ethnic minorities, disability groups, schools, areas of recreational deprivation and youth. 

WALES
Lottery funding for amateur football clubs in Wales is available through the Sports Council for Wales. Its Sportlot Capital fund awards grants of £5,000 or more for building and construction, purchase of land or rights in land, and/or capital equipment. Max 70% project costs covered for voluntary organisations, 50% for other sectors. The Sportlot Community Chest fund gives grants of up to £750 a year to support local activities, such as equipment, recruiting volunteers, coaching or events. The Sports Council for Wales also has a minor lottery grants programme with a newly simplified process for small sums. Award max £10,000. It can include equipment, small capital and/or revenue projects. 

Sportsmatch Cymru: is funded by the Welsh Assembly government and runs along the same lines as Sportsmatch in England (see above). Awards range from £500 to £15,000. 

SCOTLAND
SportScotland has two lottery programmes of interest to amateur football clubs.
Sports Facilities: Run through the school and community strand, this programme aims to convert, adapt or increase the accessibility of existing sports facilities in schools or clubs. Award max is £200,000 (up to £500,000 for local authority or other public-sector applicants). Awards are usually for 50% of eligible costs. Social Inclusion Partnerships: Aims to increase the quality and quantity of participation in sport and physical recreation for people in SIP areas, with resulting social, economic and health benefits. A key feature is community capacity building by, for example, helping groups to establish and sustain projects, developing voluntary and other community organisations. 

Sportsmatch: The Scottish Executive’s scheme acts as an incentive for businesses to sponsor grass-roots sport in Scotland. It works along the same lines as in England (see above) and is administered by SportScoltand. 

NORTHERN IRELAND
Access, and especially youth participation in sport are the strategic priorities for the Sports Council NI. The two main programmes of relevance to football are Club Sport capital and Community Sport capital.