Funding, developing and free stuff: How your club can realise its opportunities

Many people begin their journey into grassroots football on council park pitches, with old pavilions offering basic shelter, a place to sit, somewhere to change, and—if fortunate—a facility to wash off the mud after a match.

A hot drink, some level of comfort and a beer or a bacon butty was rare and usually something you left the ground and travelled to. As your experience takes you deeper up into the non-league pyramid, so do your expectations of the match day experience….and why not?

Whether a player, parent, coach, or supporter from either team, you are likely to spend a couple of hours at the ground so why not have a drink and/or food…. You may not realise it, but you have the potential to help that club continue to develop and improve.

I have been lucky to be involved in and/or helped several local clubs who have been able to grow on the pitch and then take what opportunities they can to develop their facilities. For some this has allowed them to advance, others just to change their ‘offering’.

If what you are doing on the pitch allows you to do so, then the FA give clear, albeit, changing guidelines on how your facilities need to change/improve to move in the pyramid system.

Sensibly, most of the requirements focus on helping you do what you are there for, i.e. preparing for and playing the game that we all love in a safe and comfortable environment.

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When I look back at some clubs I have been able to help, the growth has often been extensive, usually with challenges, but always, the success will be driven by having a clear vision, led by dedicated people…and, almost always, some much-needed support from outside sources.

Developing what you already have and making the most of it can be extremely rewarding. It will often require a lot of creativity and joined up thinking to open opportunities and engage with your local communities.

‘Community Engagement’ and ‘Diversification’ are key factors that the FA, other sporting bodies and Local Authorities have a high focus on…thus, your community engagement profile will impact heavily and directly on your success in gaining funding and support.

I reflect on my personal involvement and observations with local FiB clubs, e.g. Mortimer FC, Finchampstead FC and Wokingham & Emmbrook FC (now Wokingham Town FC). Here, as with many others, I have seen how local clubs are constantly trying to find how they can develop and improve what they offer to their communities.

An obvious route to development is through internal growth or collaboration. Creating links and pathway’s, to merge youth and senior football, can create challenges, and I have certainly seen these first-hand. However, I have also seen the massive rewards that, through patience and persistence, you can reap, once you get this right!!

With my main club, Binfield FC I can personally go way back to days playing at the cricket club, (1970’s), just outside the village, sharing facilities and smoothing down the molehills with our boots, as part of our pre-match warm-up.  Then post-match, we would be up to the village to the Binfield Club for ‘afters.

Then, in 1980, it was a move from one end of the village to the other. Leaving behind the old wooden cricket pavilion and our friendly moles to begin to build a new home on the other end of the village outskirts between the church and the cemetery. Such has been the dramatic and positive change that…some of the Moles followed us.

Various developments and extensive work, mostly by loyal volunteers, have taken place over many years…to create three pitches, a clubhouse, changing rooms and all the infrastructure required to support many youth teams and a group of senior sides. This is now a football facility that is National League System (NLS) ‘step 3 ready’, but with a vibrant community built behind it.

Whilst picturesque and spacious, Hill Farm Lane, is still on the outskirts of the village, effectively a ‘countryside’ location and thus does not have natural ‘footfall.’ To help sustain a club of this size, attracting regular visitors and community usage of a flexible facility is a key factor to make the club sustainable and fit for the community that it serves. This is a dilemma replicated in so many clubs up and down the country.

Binfield truly is a community-centric club and has been developed with this at the forefront. We set out to develop what we had at our disposal so that the community, i.e. the members, users and visitors to this iconic and picturesque location, could feel the benefits.

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This 40+ year journey has been due to ‘visionaries’, past and present, realising the capability of creating a more flexible ‘base’ by modernising and repurposing the internal and external spaces and then adding to them. The complimentary comments of visitors to HFL, regularly confirm that these aims have been more than achieved.

Without doubt we are finding that having done the work, this has enabled us to increase both our community engagement and our standing in the wider football community.

If you have somewhere you want to develop, then I suggest that you follow this path:

• decide what you want to achieve
• research and plan how to get there
• have a clear vision on how to maximise your ROI [often the Investment is Time NOT £…]
• …. then fund it!!

There is funding out there, having a ‘golden’ investor is obviously great, but sometimes you must understand and be prepared to ‘work with the system.’

Currently, I am in the process of project managing a similar development at Finchampstead Sports Club, where we have again secured significant funding from the Football Foundation, the Parish Council and other private investors….helped by an award of a new kitchen via the Howdens/FA Game Changer Programme….there really is free stuff out there!!

If you wish to find out more and/or see what has been achieved and what else is being looked at, please contact me and I will be happy to help where I can.

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