As part of our ‘New Club Week‘ which starts today, we’ve been made aware of a Football Foundation initiative that is giving out grants of up to £1,500 to anyone looking to setup a new club or team.
The ‘Grow the Game’ grant is specifically tailored to the creation of new clubs and teams in the grassroots game with anything from disability teams to ladies teams, girls teams to new adult men’s teams.
The application window is open until Wednesday 29th March 2017 with the funding aiming to increase participation by both players and volunteers.
What’s the grant for?
Everything from kit to facility hire, CRB checks and FA coaching courses is covered by the grant which is for ‘not for profit’ clubs and organisations.
Costs covered include:
- Facility hire
- Hire of FA qualified coaches
- Referees fees
- CRB checks
- Affiliation fees
- League entry
- First aid kits
- Promotion and publicity
- FA coaching courses
- Additional courses
- Football kit
There are several case studies from clubs who successfully applied for the grant on the Football Foundation website here.
Who can apply?
Here’s the full list of who can and can’t apply for a Grow the Game grant.
Sounds good? Here’s what you need to do before you start the application
We spoke to Matthew Pill at the Berks & Bucks County FA – who you will need to contact before making your application. You can do so via Matthew.Pill@Berks-Bucksfa.com or call 01235 544892.
Matt sent us some pointers of what you will need to have considered in order to ensure your application is successful and the information you can provide will vary depending on the age ranges of the team you are trying to setup.
Matt says:
- Project Need: What’s the purpose of the team? How does it fit with a parent club or County FA’s development plans? Make sure there isn’t similar provision locally (I.E. Two clubs attempting to recruit female players from the same school)
- Sustainability: Is any parent club FA Charter Standard? Who will your teams partners be and what are the exit routes and future pathways for players to keep them in the game. Will you have FA Qualified Coaches? Make sure to think about your ground and plans for the future, how are you going to keep players interested?
- Links: Are you going to have links to schools (Primary/Secondary/HE/FE/Inclusive) or partner clubs (Youth to Adult)? Are there leagues or leisure centres that could partner?
- Recruitment & Promo: How are you going to market the club in the community? How are you going to attract players and volunteers to the club and how are you going to communicate the clubs progress?
If you’ve been thinking about setting up your own club for a little while some of this will make sense. But if we’ve inspired you in the last few minutes don’t panic, contact Matt and talk things through.
We would also love to hear your experiences of setting up a team for ‘New Club Week’. Get in touch via our contribute page here.
For full information, and to apply for the grant please click here.
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